Why Japanese Uses 4 Different Writing Systems #didyouknow #history #languagelearning #viral

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]How many writing systems does language need? English is one, Arabic is one, Russian is one, Chinese is one. Now, what if I told you Japanese has four completely different system, different origins, different rules, and that a fluent reader switches between all of them sometimes within a single sentence without even noticing they're doing it.

[00:00:18]Here's how it happened. Japan borrowed writing from China around the 5th century AD. Chinese character kanji were the only writing system Japan had for centuries. The problem was that Chinese and Japanese are completely unrelated languages. Forcing Japanese grammar into Chinese characters was like writing English sentences using only Egyptian hieroglyphics. It worked, barely, and only if you'd spend years studying. So, Japan invented two of its own systems.

[00:00:41]Hiragana, a syllable alphabet developed largely by women in the Heian court around the 9th century. Because women weren't taught kanji, they created their own system and then used it to write some of the greatest literature in Japanese history. The world's first novel, The Tale of Genji, was written in hiragana by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu. Katakana, a second syllable alphabet by Buddhist monks around the same time. Originally used for pronunciation guides in religious texts.

[00:01:07]Today, it's used almost exclusively for foreign words. Pizza, television, coffee. In Japanese, these are written in katakana, the script that signals something came from the outside. And then in the 20th century, a fourth system, romaji, the Latin alphabet used for abbreviation, brand names, and anything targeted at an international audience. So, a single Japanese sentence can contain kanji for core concepts, hiragana for grammar, katakana for foreign words, and romaji for brand names. All four systems, one sentence.

[00:01:33]Japanese children spend years learning this and then stop noticing it entirely.

[00:01:37]That's what Airlearn is built around, the history underneath the language. If that's the kind of thing that interests you, the app is worth a try.