W104 - Kanji Overview

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W104 - Kanji Overview

This lesson covers the basics of Kanji. A few kanji are introduced, and the concept of putting together kanji is presented.

Your First Kanji

When starting to read Kanji, many books start learning kanji through pictures, that may resemble a given kanji. I don't know if that is the best way, instead I will start to give you some examples of simple Kanji that I believe might be useful for you if going to Japan. You will recognize them as soon as you open a manga or if you look at commercials or street signs in Japan.

Please do not feel overwhelmed if it looks too complex at first sight. You will have plenty of time to learn it step by step.

人	hito, -jin	person, amount of people
口	kuchi, guchi	mouth, exit, entrance
出	de(ru)/da(su)	exit, to leave / to let out
入	hai(ru) / i(ru)	enter / insert, put in
何	nan, nani	what, (how)

Let's look at some examples.

3人　です	sannin desu	(We are) three persons.
口　です	kuchi desu	(It is the) mouth
出口　です	deguchi desu	(it's the) exit.
入り口　です	iriguchi desu	(it's the) entrance.
これ　は　何　です　か。	kore wa nan desu ka	what is this?

Kanji + Hiragana

You probably noticed that some words are formed by adding hiragana after kanjis. This is the way for example verbs are formed. Here are some examples of words made out of kanji together with hiragana. The examples are given in -masu form for your convenience.

行きます	いきます	ikimasu	to go
来ます	きます	kimasu	to come
入ります	はいります	hairimasu	to enter
食べます	たべます	tabemasu	to eat
飲みます	のみます	nomimasu	to drink

Putting Together Kanji

To make it more complex, each kanji can have several different pronouncations, often depending on what you put it together with. Combining kanji can give you new words, for example the kanji for "people" and "mouth" becomes "population" when put together.

人	jin (hito)	person
口	kou (kuchi)	mouth
人口	jinkou	population

Please note that the order is very critical, if you put them together the opposite order it may be a completely different word, if it is a exisiting word at all. We will describe compound kanji more in (much) later chapters.

Other Useful Kanji

Here is a list of some more simple kanji that you probably will see during your first visit in Japan.

田中	たなか	Tanaka	last name (rice field middle)
田	た	ta	rice field
中	なか	naka	middle
山田	やまだ	Yamada	last name (mountain field)
山	やま	yama	mountain
川	かわ	kawa	river
東京	とうきょう	toukyou	Tokyo
東	とう	tou	east
京	きょう	kyou	capital

Let's look at some sample sentences using these new kanji.

私は山田です		watashi wa yamada desu.		I am (or "my name is") Yamada.
東京にすんでいます		toukyou ni sunde imasu.		(I) live in tokyo

Extras

The compound kanji are called jukugo, 熟語.
The word Kanji itself is spelled 漢字.

That's it for this lesson. Practise these kanji, and look out for next lesson.

Gambatte kudasai!
/Johan

Comments (22)

this is so good and it helps alot!!!!! :D :lol: :!: :!: :!:

You're not going to let yourself be daunted by a mere 2000 or so new symbols to learn, are you? :D
Ganbatte ne! (phrase of encouragement)

i'll try my best!

i prefer the interactive things that really get one involved in learning kanji. this did not really help. soz

I am Chinese so I know most of the Kanji already. However, some of the Kanji are just similar but not the same in Japanese. It is easy for me to make mistake by writing the Kanji in the Chinese way.

Kanji has to be memorized one by one. We learned it the same way as we grew up. Sorry guys, there is no easy way to do it.

However, I do agree with yfm43. Each Kanji is a drawing and it has meaning. If you know where it came from, it will be much easier for you to remember how to write it. And it is also fun to know. So enjoy!

i see now.

arigatou gozaimasu

Kanji have both meanings and pronunciations whenever they are used. But the same kanji often has several different pronunciations depending on the word it is in.

For example, 人 always means something like "person". But it is "hito" by itself, "jin" in the words amerikajin and nihonjin (American and Japanese person), "ri" in the words hitori and futari (one person and two people) and "nin" in the words sannin and tanin (three people and another person/other people).

@tony-san
so kanji are used more phonetically?

You basically have to know what the word you are reading sounds like. As your vocabulary expands, you will recognize each kanji as part of a whole word, and pronounce it correctly because you know how the entire word sounds. Until you become familiar with a lot of vocabulary words, you basically have to memorize the kanji spelling of each vocabulary word you learn.

There are some patterns-- for example, a word with only one kanji in it is more likely to be read with a kunyomi than an onyomi-- but these patterns tend to have exceptions-- and some kanji have several kunyomi and/or several onyomi.

This is the hardest thing about learning to read words written with kanji-- not the fact that there are a lot of kanji to learn, but that each kanji can be read in several different ways depending on what word it is in. Usually only one way will be correct for each word, although there are occasionally words with two correct pronunciations based on different readings of the individual kanji.

One place to practice reading words written in kanji (and to learn vocabulary in the process) is the web site readthekanji.com .

how do you know which pronunciation to use for the kanji? is there one that is used the most often?

it is difficult to write kanji so i need a stroke of basics kanji please tnx.......

COOL. i never knew the soap shokubutsu really meant vegetation. i know chinese so whenever i see the advertisement i thought that mayb in japanese there's a different meaning. haha :mrgreen:

Is there any special rule to how to write the Kanji lines, like there is a rule in which order to wirte the lines of the Hiragana and Katakana symbols? If yes, where can I found out how to write them?

This must be Chinese text, not Japanese. The character 语 is a "simplified hanzi", although it is equivalent to the traditional hanzi 語, which is also used as a kanji. The two characters 植物 by themselves do form a Japanese word pronounced shokubutsu, (植 = shoku, 物 = butsu) meaning plant(s), vegetation. 物語 is a Japanese word, monogatari (物 = mono, 語 = gatari), meaning story. But the simplified form 语 occurs only in Chinese.

how to pronounce "物语" in jap?
there is one product called "shokubutsu" (植物物语), so i guess "物语" is pronounced as "butsu".
is it correct?

i find it easier to learn kanji if i know where it's came from, so if your finding it a little difficult then maybe look it up on the internet and it might tell you how it became to be that symbol

Hi grigoale,
I think I have data files somewhere with the most common kanji, but I am not sure if there is just one simple meaning. The list is based on newspapers, so it may not reflect usage in daily life.
I would be happy to dig up that list for you if you would like to help out in formatting it into a html, word or pdf file.

There is unfortunately a tension between the two things you are asking for: (1) kanji which are very common, and (2) kanji which have only one meaning. Most of the more common kanji have several meanings, and almost all kanji have more than one pronunciation. Please make this request again in the forum instead of as a comment here, so that we can discuss further what would really be useful.

There are many lists of kanji by the grade in which Japanese schoolchildren learn these, and also free programs such as zkanji and WaKan which enable you to specify the grade level when you are searching for kanji; I would recommend using one of these rather than a fixed list in PDF form. See the page of software links, http://www.studyjapanese.org/links/14-software

hello guys !

I want to bring a suggestion:

to make a list of 100-150 (or more) mostly used kanji which have only one meaning in japanese and how to pronounce each kanji (as pdf file) on your website ?

There are thousands of kanji. Of these, about 2000 have been designated as "general use" (jouyou) kanji, and contemporary newspapers and such are expected to restrict the kanji they use to this set, for the most part. Some additional kanji are used for names of people and places, however.

Children learn about 1000 of these kanji in the first through sixth grades of school. An adult with a college education is likely to know at least 3500 kanji.

The numbers are even higher for the Chinese language, from which the kanji were originally adopted.

Very complicated. Is there a table of Kanji like the hiragana and katakana tables or is it not that simple?
How many kanjii symbols are there?

I find it a little difficult! :idea: :?

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