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| Chinese character
for Wō or Wa, formed by the "person" radical
亻and a wěi or wa 委 phonetic element. |
Kanji
Kanji (漢字) is one of the three forms of Japanese
writing. A kanji is an ideogram: that is, a type of
simple picture. These are made to show a word's meaning.
It is a symbol of an idea such as an object, thing or
quality.
Kanji ideograms (or “characters”) were taken from
Chinese characters, and many changed over time. The word
“kanji” means “Han characters” (i.e. “Chinese
characters”).
Kanji vs. kana
There are two other systems used to write in Japanese.
These systems are called hiragana and katakana (together
they are called “kana”). They show how a word is
pronounced because each character stands for a syllable
(a, ka, sa, ta etc.). Each kanji could also be written
in kana, indeed they are in children’s books or books
for foreigners learning Japanese.
Japanese can have many homophones for one pronunciation,
e.g. kami can mean “god”, “hair”, "paper", or "upper
stream". Since each words is made of the same syllables,
they are written using the same kana (かみ in hiragana and
カミ in katakana), but since they all have very different
meanings, the kanji character for each word is quite
different. The kanji for "god" is 神, the kanji for
"hair" is 髪, the kanji for "paper" is 紙, and the kanji
for "upper stream" is 上. However, each kanji character
can have several different pronunciations, according to
which meaning (which “reading”) is intended. |
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Kanji was originally written to look like what it means,
thus the Japanese symbol for mouth is 口 (which is said
as kuchi), and looks like a mouth. Another word, 山 (said
as yama) means mountain. The Japanese have for many
words. Many can be shown with just one kanji, but
sometimes two kanji characters are combined to make new
words, such as 山口 (yamaguchi), "mountain-mouth", meaning
a cave. (It is also a surname and the name of a
prefecture).
Kanji is often combined with hiragana to show the
grammatical meaning of the word. In English this would
be done with endings (e.g. “act” (the verb), “action”
(the noun) etc.) |
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Kun-yomi vs. on-yomi
Most kanji characters can be pronounced at least two
different ways according to whether the word is a native
Japanese word (this is called the “kun” reading, or
“kun-yomi”), or whether it came from Chinese (this
called the “on” reading or “on-yomi”). Kanji that stand
alone usually have kun-yomi, while kanji compound words
usually have on-yomi. For example, 山 on its own is "yama"
(the Japanese word for “mountain”). When it is combined
with another word or name, it is pronounced "san" e.g.
“Fuji-san” (Mount Fuji).
However, there are many exceptions to these patterns.
For example, some native Japanese words with two or more
kanji (usually proper nouns) use their kanji's kun-yomi,
like 山口, which is pronounced "yama-guchi", even though
the on-yomi for the kanji would be "san" and "kō" in
that order. Sometimes, kanji only have on-yomi and have
no kun-yomi. For example, the kanji 毒, which means
"poison", only has the on-yomi "doku". Sometimes,
compound words mix on-yomi and kun-yomi together. For
example, the word 金色, which means "golden", is
pronounced "kin-iro", in which the first kanji uses its
on-yomi, and the second-kanji uses its kun-yomi.
Sometimes, the kanji in certain compound words may not
even use their kanji readings at all, but are used only
to show the word's meaning. For example, the word 煙草 is
pronounced "tabako", which means "tobacco" in English.
This word was borrowed from Portuguese, and while the
pronunciation of the word does not match either kanji,
the meaning of the kanji are "smoke" and "grass" in that
order, hinting at the word's meaning. There are even
some words whose kanji can be used to only show a word's
pronunciation and not its meaning. These are called
ateji. For example, the word 亜米利加, which means
"America", is pronounced "Amerika", but none of the
kanji meanings have any obvious connection to America.
Usually, however, words of the last kind are usually
written in only katakana these days, though sometimes
words like "sushi" still written in ateji, like 寿司,
because Chinese tourists will recognize the ateji more
easily, since the word is written the same way in
Chinese. |
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Number of kanji
Kanji characters are classed on the basis of how many
brush strokes they are made of. The simplest kanji have
one stroke and the most complex may have up to 30
strokes.
There are many different Kanji, the exact number is not
known but it is around 50,000. However, not all 50,000
are taught in schools. The government of Japan has set
up a 1,945 basic kanji list (Jōyō Kanji) that those
learning the language ought to know. They are the ones
most commonly used in newspapers and magazines, along
with street signs and store signs. Kanji takes many
years to learn. By the end of his school years a pupil
should know about 1,850 kanji. A university graduate
would need to know about 3000. If someone does not know
the kanji for a word, they can write it in kana and it
will be understood, but it is usually not the proper way
to write it.
New Japanese-English Character Dictionary ed J Halpern
Kenkyusha 1990 |
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 Kiddle: Kanji
Wikipedia: Kanji |
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