Modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses the Latin alphabet. Examples of such usage include abbreviations such as "CD" and "DVD".
It is also possible to represent spoken or written Japanese entirely in the Latin alphabet. Several common systems for the romanization of Japanese are used. Romanized Japanese, called rōmaji is frequently used by foreign students of Japanese, who have not yet mastered the three main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input.
Here is an example of a newspaper headline that uses all four scripts (a headline from the Asahi Shimbun on 19 April, 2004) ( kanji red , hiragana blue , katakana green , Latin Alphabet and Arabic numerals black): : Here are some examples of words written in Japanese:
| Kanji | Hiragana | Katakana | Rōmaji | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I, me | ||||
| goldfish | ||||
| or | tobacco, cigarette | |||
| Tokyo (the capital of Japan), literally eastern capital |
Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent gojūon (fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha ordering. Chinese character dictionaries are also collated using the radical system.
