The Japanese alphabet is called kana (仮名かな). There are two fonts for kana, one is called hiragana (平仮名ひらがな) and the other is called katakana (平仮名かたかな). Hiragana is formed from the cursive script borrowed from kanji and is used for writing and printing. Katakana is formed by borrowing the radical caps of Chinese characters and is used to record foreign words and some special words. In addition, there are also romaji spelling kana, called "romanji pinyin". Romaji pinyin is generally used for sending telegrams, writing trademarks, business cards, and abbreviating foreign words. The scope of use is gradually expanding.

First of all, the phonetic notation of Chinese characters in Japanese is in hiragana. To a certain extent, the role of Hiragana is equivalent to Pinyin in our Chinese language. But our Chinese language completely uses Chinese characters. And since Japanese is developed from a part of Chinese, that is, incomplete quotation, all the Japanese we see today are mostly composed of Japanese Kanji and Hiragana. For example, the word "asking and asking" is a combination of Japanese kanji and hiragana. There are also many words in Japanese that are expressed entirely in Chinese characters. For example, the word "product (せいひん): product, product" evolved from the "product" in our Chinese language.

Katakana is mainly used to write foreign words, onomatopoeia, names of people, place names and professional terms, or to express emphasis. To put it simply, loanwords are words introduced from the West or Europe and America that were not originally in Japan, and their pronunciation also evolved from the pronunciation of other countries' languages. Foreign words are mostly expressed in katakana. For example: "アイスクリーム: ice cream", "Aアメリカ: United States".

Hiragana is the most important commonly used language tool in Japanese life. However, in recent years, among young people in Japan, there is a tendency to use katakana instead of hiragana, and katakana is used in Japanese learning. The center is the key point.