So I’m taking the placement test on duolingo, and this question is asking me to translate “Yes, I’m fine” into Japanese. I’m barely level one and know only Hiragana and Katakana, so naturally I answer “ええ, げんきです”. But I tried the other options for the sake of it and turns out “元気” had the same pronunciation as “げんき”. Now I don’t know much bout anything other than Hiragana or Katakana so am assuming it’s Kanji or whatnot, and turns out both are correct solutions, but are there any instances where one is preferred over the other, or anything similar that I should know?
元気 is the kanji for げんき.
It’s usually written in kanji, but you can see it in hiragana for emphasis or stuff like that.
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I see, thanks ^-^ Hopefully I’ll get to a stage where I can tell that myself, soon!
All Japanese words can technically be written in kana. But in practice, they run the whole range of possibilities, from almost always written in kana, to sometimes written in kana or kanji, to almost always written in kanji.
元気 is probably a word that falls heavily on the kanji side, but it’s not unheard of to see it in kana. The main reason you might see it in kana as a learner is because often textbooks assume you don’t know kanji yet.
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