When is it appropriate to use what alphabet?


I'm very new to Japanese, and I was wondering when is it appropriate to use
what alphabets? I've been practicing entirely in hiragana thus far, and I know
that katakana is for foreign words and sounds, but how do you know when to use
kanji?




Japanese is written using a combination of all the three sets of characters:
hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

You should expect them to come together in an average Japanese text (meant for
adults) and not in isolation or in exclusivity. Children start off reading and
writing everything in hiragana because it is easy (if you look at children's
books, you can confirm that is the case), but as they learn more and more
kanji (Chinese characters), they have to use those instead.

Kanji are characters originally from China and are, easily speaking, used to
convey ideas. In Japanese, they are used as the basis of each word while
hiragana complements it by adding conjugation, etc.

> e.g. 食べる（たべる to eat); 旅行する (りょこうする to travel)

Katakana are a set of characters that have a one-to-one correspondence with
Hiragana characters. Some of them might look very similar, like hiragana か vs
katakana カ. Essentially, Katakana are used for foreign or loan words.
Furthermore, they are also used for technical and scientific words. In manga,
a character using katakana for its speech bubble might also indicate he is a
robot.

> e.g. コンピュータ computer;
> [アナウサギ](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8A%E3%82%A6%E3%82%B5%E3%82%AE)
> word for a kind of rabbit (demonstrates scientific terms are written in
> katakana)

So in conclusion, you have to use all of them to read and write "fluent"
Japanese. In my opinion, once you learn the Kanji, your reading becomes so
much faster and convenient. Talking from experience, after having studied
Japanese for more than four years, I feel rather annoyed if I have to read
some text that only has hiragana (like children's books). It is much faster to
read a single character (e.g 表す） than to read four characters just to speak
the same word （表す is read as あらわす）.




Japanese is written using a combination of all the three sets of characters:
hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

You should expect them to come together in an average Japanese text (meant for
adults) and not in isolation or in exclusivity. Children start off reading and
writing everything in hiragana because it is easy (if you look at children's
books, you can confirm that is the case), but as they learn more and more
kanji (Chinese characters), they have to use those instead.

Kanji are characters originally from China and are, easily speaking, used to
convey ideas. In Japanese, they are used as the basis of each word while
hiragana complements it by adding conjugation, etc.

> e.g. 食べる（たべる to eat); 旅行する (りょこうする to travel)

Katakana are a set of characters that have a one-to-one correspondence with
Hiragana characters. Some of them might look very similar, like hiragana か vs
katakana カ. Essentially, Katakana are used for foreign or loan words.
Furthermore, they are also used for technical and scientific words. In manga,
a character using katakana for its speech bubble might also indicate he is a
robot.

> e.g. コンピュータ computer;
> [アナウサギ](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8A%E3%82%A6%E3%82%B5%E3%82%AE)
> word for a kind of rabbit (demonstrates scientific terms are written in
> katakana)

So in conclusion, you have to use all of them to read and write "fluent"
Japanese. In my opinion, once you learn the Kanji, your reading becomes so
much faster and convenient. Talking from experience, after having studied
Japanese for more than four years, I feel rather annoyed if I have to read
some text that only has hiragana (like children's books). It is much faster to
read a single character (e.g 表す） than to read four characters just to speak
the same word （表す is read as あらわす）.

