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Kana is a collective term referring to hiragana and katakana, the two syllabic Japanese alphabets. Whereas kanji represent ideas or concepts, hiragana and katakana only represent syllables. See the What's a kanji? section for a detailed explanation. You should probably learn both hiragana and katakana before starting on the kanji, though some people are happy to do all three at once. Personally, I recommend you start with hiragana, then move on to katakana, then start with Level 4 of the JLPT kanji. If you're going to need all three systems eventually anyway, it's probably easier to go from hiragana to katakana than the other way around. If, however, you're only going to be in Japan for a short time, and don't plan on learning much of the language but would still like to be able to read the odd restaurant menu, you might as well approach the katakana first. So - what's it going to be? Show me the hiragana |