When do you use Hiragana and Katakana?
Hiragana and katakana are phonetic systems, meaning that each character indicates the phoneme, or pronunciation. In both systems of writing, there are 46 characters that share the same pronunciation.
Appearance: Many of the characters between hiragana and katakana look similar, but hiragana is typically written with smooth strokes, while katakana is written with sharp strokes.
Usage for hiragana: Hiragana is used for words that originate in Japan and for structuring sentences with particles.
Usage for katakana: Katakana is used for foreign words, which are any words that do not originate in Japan. It is also used as onomatopoeia in manga. Manga is the term for Japanese comics.
It is best to learn how to read and write hiragana first because it is the most commonly used writing system in Japan. Katakana is only used when a sentence features foreign words. Starting with hiragana first also makes it easier to understand katakana.
Vowels: あ (a), い (i), う (u), え(e) and お (o)
Pronunciation:
あ (a) - “ah” > father, water, common
い (i) - “ee” > meat, tree, ski, equal
う (u) - “oo” > soup, moon, student
え(e) - “eh” > bed, internet, mess
お (o) - “oh” > quote, foam, tone
Vowels can combine, which changes the pronunciation of words.
Pronunciation:
あい (ai) - “eye” > bicycle, item, dive
えい (ei) - “ay” > birthday, racecar, playground
All of the characters from the katakana chart are pronounced the same way as the hiragana characters. As mentioned before, there aren't too many differences when it comes to hiragana and katakana. A lot of the characters between the two writing systems look similar, and katakana is used for foreign words.
Examples
アメリカ (amerika) - America
コーヒー (ko-phi-) - coffee
スポーツ (supo‑tsu) - sports
エミリー (emiri-) - Emily
ジャスティン (jasutin) - Justin
Kanji is more difficult than the prior writing systems. Rather than only having 46 characters, kanji has thousands that exist. What is kanji used for? Because there are no spaces in Japanese sentences, then a lot of sentences become extremely long. Rather than spelling every word out in hiragana or katakana, kanji is used to shorten sentences. Kanji is different from hiragana and katakana because each kanji character represents an entire word or phrase. For example, instead of repeatedly spelling out わたし (watashi, meaning "I"), the kanji shortens it to 私. Seeing too much hiragana in one sentence can be confusing, but kanji makes it easier by shortening it and having characters to represent common words. It is difficult to write the kanji because each character is made out of multiple hiragana characters and other characters borrowed from the Chinese language.