[JohnBraden]

They are not languages they speak. They are writing methods and they use all three at the same time. Hiragana is a phonetic "alphabet" for Japanese words. Katakana is a phonetic "alphabet" for non-Japanese words. Kanji is the Chinese-based writing method where a character stands for a word. In a sentence, you can run into all three writing methods all mixed in.

Japanese people speak Japanese....