ありがとう せんせい
You know the funny part, these words are not new to me, but I can read them now in hiragana!
Ps I am clueless about grammar though!
PPS, why do we need Kanji or even katakana? If we can write everything in Hiragana? I mean is there a reason? 😂
Compare:
ありがとうせんせい
ありがとう先生
Japanese doesn't use spaces, so there is nothing to tell you where one word ends and another begins. That in mind, kanji becomes invaluable for quick reading and comprehension.
Another fun example
にわにはにわにわとりがいる。
That は is read as わ, making it niwaniwaniwaniwatorigairu
Yikes! Looks fairly nonsensical. At least until we use kanji, which makes it:
庭には二羽鶏がいる。
“There are two chickens in the garden.”
As for Katakana, well, it is a bit like upper and lower case in English. Not strictly necessary, but useful for emphasis, foreign words, and stylistic clarity.
Thank you! Yes, I get it. Yet I am paralyzed when most common resources tells me that I must learn 2000 kanji at a minimum to read basic books!
So my dream of reading “the wild Sheep Chase” or “Kafka on the shore” seems so far fetched that it is unobtainium
Those are no basic books!!
Yeah, I know it looks daunting, but it's not as bad as it seems. There are only 150 or so radicals that make up all the kanji, usually 2-3 radicals put together to make the kanji — so once you learn those radicals, you can more easily read and write the kanji.
What helped me get a handle on a heck of a lot of them was this book:
https://amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Characters/dp/0824835921
Basically you learn them by making up a small story that places each radical in the proper place. Sounds like it would be too slow, but it works remarkably well.