Ran,
You hit the all the salient points dead-on. Except Katakana is the alphabet for foreign words, and Hirigana is the alphabet for "native" words.
Japan is the only country I know with an official government ministry dedicated to sorting out the "official" language of the country. They spend most of their time assembling the "official" kanji list (those characters and their meanings in japanese - as opposed to their "native" chinese meaning...).
Reading/writing japanese is indeed a challenge. Not only the three separate alphabets, but sentence structure is strange, too. The japanese put their verbs at the END of most sentences...so, even if you listen carefully, you can end up losing the meaning of an entire sentence if you miss the verb at the end.
I was the token round-eye intern at NHK in Tokyo for two straight years - proofing translated news reports with my japanese counterpart for NHK broadcasts in english.
You hit the all the salient points dead-on. Except Katakana is the alphabet for foreign words, and Hirigana is the alphabet for "native" words.
Japan is the only country I know with an official government ministry dedicated to sorting out the "official" language of the country. They spend most of their time assembling the "official" kanji list (those characters and their meanings in japanese - as opposed to their "native" chinese meaning...).
Reading/writing japanese is indeed a challenge. Not only the three separate alphabets, but sentence structure is strange, too. The japanese put their verbs at the END of most sentences...so, even if you listen carefully, you can end up losing the meaning of an entire sentence if you miss the verb at the end.
I was the token round-eye intern at NHK in Tokyo for two straight years - proofing translated news reports with my japanese counterpart for NHK broadcasts in english.
