Japanese with Reverse Lesson 11: An Introduction to Kanji and Why It’s Important
I’m sure you’re all aware, but Japanese uses three different writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. We went over hiragana and katakana already, but we haven’t really talked about kanji much. Today, I will be introducing you to kanji. Today’s lesson is very important, so I would love it if you all would take the time to read and share this!
What is kanji? Simply put, kanji is the writing system that the Japanese adopted from China and integrated into their language. Kanji is intimidating to a lot of people—even I get uncomfortable when confronted with a wall of Japanese text. It’s completely understandable though; there are over 2,000 kanji characters used in daily Japanese, and thousands of more that are not used for every day purposes. However, kanji is our friend, and with persistence, motivation, and your own dedication, kanji will be a breeze. I can almost guarantee it.
Why is kanji important?
To start things off, let me talk about romaji. Romaji is essentially Japanese text that has been transcribed into Latin letters so people that speak Western languages can read text easier. You can find similar methods of romanization for languages like Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean, and Russian.
Now, it’s really popular for people that study Japanese to use lots of romaji in their studies. I don’t believe in using romaji except when learning hiragana and katakana. Once you can read hiragana and katakana, romaji is not necessary and can potentially hinder your reading skills if used regularly. Maybe romaji is okay if you’re just going to visit Japan for a few days and you only need speaking skills and have no real intent to learn the language. However, if you are aiming to learn Japanese, or even live in Japan like myself, romaji is basically useless. Japan does not use romaji. Japan uses Japanese text because Japanese is Japan’s native language. Maybe the only romaji you will see in Japan is city names on highway signs, but that’s basically it. If you are serious about learning the Japanese language, please make the commitment to learn the native writing systems.
I would encourage you to read I Love Kanji’s article on romaji!
On the flip side, you can’t only know hiragana and katakana if you want to read and write Japanese either. Yes, hiragana and katakana are essential to Japanese, but they are often paired up with kanji and if you don’t know the kanji, you won’t know how to read! Using only hiragana and katakana can also make things very hard to read—my Japanese textbook for school uses a lot of hiragana, and I always get stuck on reading because of the lack of kanji. Let’s take a look:
ははははたちでした。
That’s pretty difficult to read, isn’t it? Seeing four は characters in a row kind of makes me nervous, and I’m having a little bit of a hard time actually processing what that says. Let’s see what this sentence looks like when you include kanji:
母は二十歳でした。
This is much better. It is a lot easier to read, and my brain can now quickly process that this sentence says, “My mother was 20 years old.” Kanji is a really useful in situations like this.
Japanese is also a language rich with homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but mean different things. We have tons of these in English, such as “way” and “weigh.” We can tell the meanings of these words apart when we see them written out and also when we hear them in context. Of course, just like any fully functional language, you can understand homophones in Japanese if you hear the words in context. But what about written text? Let’s take a look at some examples. I will use romaji, hiragana/katakana, and kanji in these examples.
Let’s start off with a romaji transliteration:
kami wa kami ni burashi kaketa.
So, we’re seeing the same word come up twice here: “kami.” “Kami” in Japanese means “god,” “paper,” and “hair.” Okay, so which of these words are we using in this sentence? Because it’s not written in Japanese text, we’re not too sure yet. Let’s see if we can figure it out in Japanese.
かみはかみにブラシかけた。
Alright, we’re using Japanese text now, but I still can’t tell if we’re talking about paper, hair, or a god. Let’s see if using some kanji will make figuring this out easier.
神は髪にブラシかけた。
This is much better. With the inclusion of kanji, I can now clearly see which words are being used and I can understand that this sentence says, “The god brushed his hair.” When written in kanji, 髪 is “hair,” 紙 is “paper,” and 神 is “god.” These are all read as kami. With the help of kanji, the massive amounts of homophones in the Japanese language makes reading much easier.
What kanji is
Kanji are made up of these little pieces called radicals. Radicals are kind of like the building blocks of a lot of kanji characters, especially the big ones that have 20 or more strokes. Radicals help you learn to write kanji because you write them one stroke at a time, one radical at a time, until you complete the kanji. It’s actually a lot simple than it sounds. Since I’m no good at explaining what exactly a radical is, I highly suggest that you read the KANJIDAMAGE articles about the basics of kanji and why textbooks suck.
Common kanji
Now, since there are well over 3,000 kanji characters, I am not going to list a bunch of them here! But there are some very common kanji that you will see in Japan, some of which you may already know.
Methods for studying kanji
There are a lot of methods out there for studying kanji; you just have to find what method is right for you! Personally, I view websites in Japanese and use the Chrome extension Rikaikun to help me read things I don’t know. I also use Denshi Jisho’s kanji by radicals tab like it’s going to be removed tomorrow. I also read as much Japanese text as I can, whether it’s books, manga, websites, or comments.
One thing that really helps me learn a lot of kanji though is reading Japanese song lyrics in Japanese, and you can do this at the wonderful site Utaten! The amount of kanji I’ve learned from reading Japanese songs is incredible. Granted I still can’t write a lot of the kanji I know from my memory, I can recognize them when I see them written down. Give it a shot if you have a favorite Japanese artist!
If flashcards are your thing, you can download Anki and various kanji decks. You can also make your own flashcards if it’s harder for you to learn from a computer. Handmade flashcards mean that you can practice what you know on someone else!
You can also try repetitive writing. This is what we do in my Japanese class, and I actually kind of like it. We typically write a new kanji about ten times in special boxes made specifically for kanji. Then again, I learn pretty fast so ten times is just the right amount for me, but some people may need more. If you’re into writing things down for your memory, why don’t you try getting a sheet of lined paper and write a kanji repeatedly on each line?
There is, of course, all of the links that I have posted in lesson nine. Please don’t forget about those links! Review that post as much as you need to—it’s important! Bookmark it if you have to!
Alright, today has been another resourceful post regarding the Japanese language. My lesson nine resource post was so popular, and if this one is as well, I think I might try to make a few more posts like that and this in the future!
I hope you all learned a little something new about kanji today. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, my ask box is always open! You may also drop me a line to request a certain part of Japanese that you might struggle with and I can arrange to make a future post about it! If you want to ask me about my experience learning Japanese or anything of that sort, never hesitate to ask. I’m always happy to give insight to my own personal experience. If you see any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them right away. I tag all of these posts as “Japanese with Reverse,” so feel free to refer back to them on my blog at any time!
毎日勉強してください！
reblogs for the night crowd
