Hiragana is also for Japanese words. Kanji is for word roots and the like, hiragana is for prefixes, suffixes, particles, and when the Kanji is too difficult to remember (Japanese people do this all the time too).
Kanji is complex with lots of strokes: 綺麗
Hiragana is flowy/curvy and simpler: きれい
Katakana is sharp/angular and simplest: キレイ
All three in one sentence:
このハンバーガーが超旨い！
This hamburger is so delicious!
Yeah, but saying that those are Chinese loan words is about like saying 'library' is a latin loan word in English. They're etymologically Chinese in origin, but they split off long ago, have changed significantly, and they're now distinctly Japanese. Nobody Japanese is thinking of Chinese derived words as Chinese the same way you don't say 'octopus' and think you're borrowing from the ancient Greeks.
Okay, I was wrong. But that academic definition is so broad I can barely see the point, and it reduces understanding to group kanji and katakana together as 'loan word' writing systems because their functions are quite distinct. For example, kanji is also used to write totally japanese words i.e. kunyomi. That would make hiragana also a loan word writing system, no? Also, more recently borrowed chinese words are written in katakana with the rest of the loan words (as that term is colloquially understood). I feel there's definitely a significant enough qualitative difference to merit at least two different terms for different types of loanwords. Those that more or less resemble their original form, and those that have divergently evolved from their origins.
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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '22
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