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Do I have to use kanji/hiragana/katakana/romaji to answer questions?

Hiragana, katakana, and romaji can be used interchangably - they're converted into the right format behind the scenes. Kanji can be used on the conjugation and nouns pages - it can't be used to answer questions on the kanji page, for obvious reasons...

Hiragana/katakana conversion works as you'd expect - characters from one kana are replaced by the equivalent in the other. However, the rules for romaji to kana conversion may require some explaining:

• In general, conversion is simple: kondo becomes こんど, for example.
• Conversion is Hepburn-based: shi becomes し but si isn't recognised.
• は is always converted as ha, never wa. Same goes for へ (he, not e).
• nna becomes っな, not んな. Use n' for an explicit ん: n'na
• kaa becomes かあ, ka- becomes かー, and kā isn't recognised.

Lower-case characters become hiragana; UPPER-CASE characters become katakana. You can see how the conversion process works using the buttons below:

Resources

• japanese.about.com (Namiko Abe)
  • Adjectives
  • Verbs
• Guide to Learning Japanese (Tae Kim)
  • Grammar Guide
  • Complete Guide
• WWWJDIC (Jim Breen)
  • Supplementary conjugation notes