Japanese can be daunting for new learners - it has its own distinctive writing system that places a barrier to entry on new learners. If you want to learn Japanese, you have to learn the writing system from scratch. However, don't be phased - much of it isn't actually difficult to learn.

Despite popular myth, Japanese does have a written alphabet called the Kana (although technically it's a syllabary). Where things get tricky is that Japanese uses three different writing systems in parallel.

• Hiragana: The main Kana syllabary - used for words of Japanese origin.
• Katakana: The second Kana syllabary - accommodates foreign loan words.
• Kanji: characters loaned from Chinese, of which you'll need to learn some 2,000 of these to reach adult fluency.

All words in Japanese can be written and read using Hiragana or Katakana, and the vast majority will use Hiragana - therefore, the Hiragana is your first and most important port of call.

Does this mean? ... Depression

This often leads to a question, and a feeling of dread - even language depression - which isn't a good start on what is probably day 1 of your journey into Japanese. That question is "So, does this mean I have to learn not one, but two entire alphabets and 2,000 chinese kanji characters before I can even start to learn words, put sentences together and actually learn some Japanese?".

If you're worried about this, fortunately the answer to this question is no and its probably an extremely unproductive use of your time to attempt to do so.

If we break the three writing systems down:

• The Hiragana:

You will need to study the Hiragana in full. It's the main Japanese syllabary and as such, most words you encounter will be using it.

While some students choose to learn it confidently before moving forward, it's by no means essential. You should at the very least have a general understanding of the characters, however even if you're routinely making mistakes or mixing certain characters up, then through repeated exposure while studying grammar you will become much more confident with them.

That said, the more confident you are with the Hiragana the more confidently you're going to be able to progress forward. It takes most students a few days to a week to learn the Hiragana to a point where they feel comfortable moving forward.

• The Katakana:

The Katakana comes with a problem - it's mostly used for loan words and sometimes for stylistic effect in marketing materials. This means you're not going to encounter the katakana as frequently - leading many students to forget them even if they have spent a lot of time studying them at the start.

Therefore, while at the very least you should review the katakana briefly, whether to study the Katakana fully at the beginning is a matter of personal choice. Many students review the katakana and then study it properly while learning grammar.

• Kanji:

Kanji is the one that scares most newcomers. Fortunately you don't need to learn any kanji characters before starting to learn Japanese grammar, they are introduced gradually during courses and all kanji characters can be written or read using Hiragana.

What do Hiragana look like?

The hiragana has a rounded stroke style, each representing its own sound - in the case above あ is the vowel 'a'. There are 46 basic characters, plus 25 dakuten to learn. A dakuten is a diacritic marker similar to an accent that can be added to certain consonants to change its pronunciation slightly.

Once you've learned these, there are several digraphs to learn. Digraphs are pronunciation rules where certain combinations of characters make their own distinct sounds.

The Hiragana is the most important first step to learning Japanese.

What do Katakana look like?

The katakana have a more angular stroke style. The katakana mirrors the hiragana but contains some slightly different pronunciation rules and additional sounds to accommodate foreign loan words that cannot be voiced in the regular Japanese syllabary. In this case, the katakana ア also represents the vowel 'a' but will primarily be encountered in loan words.

What do kanji look like?

The kanji are pictographs loaned from Chinese, of which there are a little over 2,000 in common use today. In order to reach native speaker fluency you'll need to learn around 2,000 kanji characters. A university educated Japanese person may know around 3,000 kanji characters, however many of these will be technical words that are specific to their field of study and not in common use.

As we stated earlier, kanji are introduced gradually over your study. You'll also find most courses, study materials and even native content aimed at younger Japanese people will include something called "furigana" - small hiragana printed above the kanji characters as a pronunciation guide.

Once you have completed this Hiragana course, you will be able to read the above kanji using the furigana - and any other kanji character that contains a furigana guide, or kanji in a dictionary - because all good dictionaries such as https://jisho.org include furigana alongside all kanji words.

What a Japanese sentence looks like

The sentence above contains a mixture of hiragana, katakana and a couple of kanji characters.