LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Japanese: Characters
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One of the most salient characteristics of Japanese grammar is the notion of politeness. There are three main levels of politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form, the simple polite form, and the advanced polite form (honorific and humble).
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At first the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese or in a Japanese-Chinese hybrid style. An example of the hybrid style is the kojiki (Records of Antiquity) written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana, literarly "Ten Thousand leaf syllabic script", which used the characters for their phonetic values.
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The two Japanese "alphabets," Hiragana and Katakana, each contain 46 characters. Every character is animated to show you the proper stroke order, and then tips and quizzes help you to drive them home.
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The plain form in Japanese is characterized by the dictionary form of verbs + the da form of the copula. In the simple polite level, verbs end with -masu, and the copula desu is used. The advanced polite level frequently uses special honorific and humble verb forms. The honorific suffix -san 'Mr., Mrs. or 'Ms. should not be used to talk about oneself or someone from one's own group to an external person.
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