Japanese Writing Systems Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kanji

Kanji was a writing system that was developed in China and then adopted by the Japanese language. What's special about this system is that it comes with Chinese characters as part of the Japanese language. The hiragana and katakana characters were developed from these characters. Romaji is the system of Japanese words made out of letters, like the English language.

Answer: Characters with a quotation mark or circle

Diacritic marks are hiragana or katakana characters that have a quotation mark or circle. These characters are used to represent sound change. Diacritic marks either consist of a quotation mark or a circle.

Answer: Ya, yu, and yo

Contracted sounds represent a single syllable. There are 33 sets of hiragana characters that represent contracted sounds. The word can either begin with ky, sh, ch, ny, hy, my, ry, gy, j, by, or py and end with a, u, or o. The hiragana characters are either ky, sh, ch, ny, hy, my, ry, gy, j, by, or py with a smaller ya, yu, or yo right next to them.

Answer: Ya, yu, yo, a, i, e, and o

Contracted sounds in katakana represent a single syllable. There are more character sets that represent contracted sound in katakana than hiragana. A smaller ya, yu, yo, a, i, e, or o comes after certain katakana characters.

Answer: Sui or mizu

Sui is the Japanese word that was borrowed from the Chinese language, while mizu is the native Japanese word for water. The word swim in Japanese can be a noun and a verb. Suiei is the noun and oyogu is the verb for swimming.

Answer: Kou, guchi, or kuchi

Kou is the Japanese word that was borrowed from the Chinese language while guchi or kuchi are the native Japanese words for mouth. Examples of words that use this kanji include: entrance and exit. For entrance the ... is iriguchi and for exit, the ... is deguchi.

Answer: Ji

The only word for the kanji that means yourself is ji, which is its native Japanese word. The kanji resembles a box with two lines and a short diagonal line at the top. There are other kanjis that look similar to this. Other kanjis that look similar to this one include the kanji for the color white and the number 100.

Answer: When someone disagrees with something

"No" in English means that someone disagrees with something, but not in Japanese. In Japanese, it has different functions. When the no particle connects two nouns, the first noun is the one that specifies the second one. It also can represent ownership. The no particle can also be used as an indefinite noun in order to prevent a word from being repeated again.

Answer: To connect two verbs

The "to" particle doesn't connect two verbs. In order to connect them, a verbal -te form needs to be used for the verb that connects to the other verb. This particle can connect two nouns by functioning as the word "and". When it is used when two people do something together, it functions as the word "with".

This particle can also be used to express what someone thinks about something, where a short form needs to be used before "to omoimasu" or "to itte imashita" when they said something. "To omoimasu" and "to itte imashita" comes at the end of a sentence.

Answer: For tools and transportation

The de particle has different functions. One of functions is for the location where a verb takes place. The de and ni particles all deal with location. One of the differences between these two particles is that de represents the location that a verb takes place while ni is for the goal of movement. There are also other functions that the ni particle has.