Naruto.Haruno

How do you know when to use withever?
Like, Say if I wanted to write something, How would I know which one to use?

ばか = Hiragana
バカ = Katakana
??? = I don't know Kanji.

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Sakura-chan♥

hiragana is used on japanese words
ex: わたし - watashi

katakana is used on foreign words that are converted to japanese (borrowed words)
ex: アメリカ - amerika

as for kanji.. iuno.. lol.. i only know few of these. sorry XD

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WOKyogme

All I see is boxes, what the fk?

I'MNOTCRAZY

that's probably because you are running windows.

Kanji is like...光 is light. it's the chinese character, but pronounced differently.

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NarutoChan

if you are running windows, you must have the Japanese language pack installed. And kanji is more of a traditional form of writing. there is also Romaji which is the spoken language here in Japan. Its fun to speak in write in Japanese 日本は楽しい!

Hadaka

Just like いってばよ。

speedhost101

Nchan said japan is pleasnt and Hadaka said saying.
p.s. I won't really go on this forum anymore coz' I spend more time on another one.

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OffTheChain

Japanese is not natural without using all in a sentence sometimes.

Freshgrease

I dunno about when to use certain words, but alot of the Japanese websites and news papers use a buttload of hiragana. When I type on my Macbook (set to use hiragana as the input method) I type it as if I was saying it, but sometimes it already converts the word into a kanji despite me not telling it too.

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OffTheChain

Oh, do you press space when you typed it? Cause sometimes if you press enter instead, it doesn't convert to kanji when in hiragana mode.

You can use that if you want as well: http://ajaxime.chasen.org/

Freshgrease

I think that's right. There's just one more keystroke per syllable. I havn't really been using it lately, but now I am making flash cards to learn the hiragana alphabet. I'm doin alright I guess.

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Sharingan Lord

You'd use Hiragana for Japanese words, Katakana for words that aren't Japanese, and Kanji for...um, I'm not too sure about this. But yeah, you would use Hiragana for "baka" as you have there, not so sure about using it in kanji, though. Katakana would be for "pinku", "supootsu", and "hanbaagaa". (Pink, sports, and hamburger.)

Kanji - all I know is that it means Chinese writing, and that the only reason Japanese use it is because it was the first writing system or something. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have fallen asleep during class. //shrugs.

Hadaka

Comeon man
Hiragana used to implement grammatics, such as place, action etc. And in certain situations, to write little known or hardly understandable words.
You're perfectly right about katakana.
Kanji - "chinese characters" - are basic writing system that was brought to Nippon at VI A.D. as I remember.

OffTheChain

Heres a very good dict: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html