An Introduction to Kanji

I wrote this rather long intro to kanji (the Chinese character system adopted by the Japanese) for a very genki young student who wants to do things correctly right from the start. In my mind, the writing system and spoken language should preferably be learned side by side. I understand many people don't have time for this but it's still what I recommend.

I myself gave up trying to learn kanji when I lived in Japan and I now think that was a big mistake. Then again at the time I had no convenient iPad, Internet or anything else except for good old books and a pen and paper.

Brief Guide to Kanji by Kamakiri

Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words, and so the same character may be pronounced in different ways. From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". 

Some kanji have very few ways to read them (and pronounce them) and some kanji, especially the very common ones, have many, many readings, and uses, and pronunciations.

We have looked, for example, at the kanji "日". This is one of the simplest kanji you will see, but it is also one with the most meanings and way of reading and pronunciation. For example, it is used in the name for Japan, the country: 日本, which is pronounced "Nihon" or sometimes "Nippon" (the second way is usually by older Japanese people, but you will sometimes hear it).

Both the kanji for "Japan" are two of the most commonly used kanji in Japanese, so they have LOTS of different readings and pronunciations, and even completely different meanings. So for example, the kanji "日" can mean "day," " sun, " or be a counter for days of the week, with the pronunciations of "nichi" and "hi."

This kanji, luckily for us, is not part of an adjective, or verb, or other part of speech -- unfortunately, many kanji are.

When that happens, like in the case of "行" which by itself, as a noun standing alone, it is a noun meaning "going" or "journey," and is pronounced "kō" (you'll remember that if it has a bar on top it is an extended vowel).

However, if it is attached to other kanji, in which case it is called a KANJI COMPOUND (that just means two or more kanji attached together to form different words) that's when you will see the "different readings" of each kanji come out. In the case of the compound word "銀行," which is pronounced "gin-kō" and means "bank", luckily the pronunciation of "kō" is the same, but bear in mind that this is not always the case. In this word for "bank," the first kanji means "silver," so together the word can be translated to English literally as "Silver-go," which I suppose makes some sense. You "go" there to get "silver." Most kanji have these rather odd meanings. Many times the two kanji practically mean exactly the same thing; why this is so is not clear, but there must have been a reason in ancient China.

When a kanji is combined with other kanji to make a COMPOUND, like the example just given, it usually uses its "Chinese" reading, or pronunciation, which is called "On-yomi." "On-yomi" literally means in English "Sound-reading," which tells you that that particular kanji is being used for its sound as well as meaning. Very, very often, if you compare the "on-yomi" of a Japanese kanji to the Chinese character (the Chinese call their writing "han-zi," which is not that far apart from "kan-ji!") it can sound the same, or in some cases, be absolutely identical.

When a kanji is used, say, for a verb, then HIRAGANA will be added to it. In the case of "行く", it becomes the verb "iku," which is now pronounced "iku", but with the kanji now making the "ik" sound, and everything after that is the verb, which will be written in hiragana. So, in the case of iku, we say that it is a "u-dropping" verb, which simply means that instead of the "u," HIRAGANA will be used to form the various tenses, so now the "行" is just the STEM of the verb "to go."

In general, in the case of verbs, you just have to figure out what the stem is going to be -- and the stem will 99% of the time be a kanji. After that stem, you will use hiragana to conjugate the verb, but the stem kanji's pronunciation will never change. So in the case of the verb "Iku," the kanji "行" will ALWAYS be pronounced "Ik" although the hiragana coming after it will change the whole word's pronunciation.

Sometimes a kanji will be the base for an adjective as well. In Japanese, adjective like "cold," "hot" and other common ones can actually be used as a verb at the same time, which is completely different to English. In English, we would have to say "It was hot," where we use the "It was" to tell that "hot" is in the past tense. In Japanese, many times an adjective (they are called "i-adjectives, because they end in the hiragana 'い'") can just change its hiragana to make a past tense. For example, 暑い, which as you can see ends in an "い," will change to "暑かった" (atsu-katta,) which means "It was hot." The kanji "暑" is pronounced "atsu" and everything that is hiragana that comes after it will change the pronunciation of the word. In many ways, you can call this kind of word an "Adjectival verb," since it is half adjective and half verb. We don't have anything like that in English!

So to sum it up, kanji are used mainly for three things: to be part of a word when combined with other kanji -- this is usually just two kanji, but can be more -- and is called a KANJI COMPOUND, or just a "compound." Then, it can be the base for a verb, in which case it will take on its Japanese pronuciation/reading, called "KUN-YOMI," which pretty much means "Japanese reading." So, for many kanji, you have to learn the On-yomi, which in a dictionary is usually written in katakana, and Kun-yomi, which in a dictionary is usually written as hiragana (that's how you know it's the Japanese form, because katakana is usually used to spell foreign words).

So, the kanji "行" will have a dictionary entry something like this:

行

Chinese reading (On-yomi, notice katakana):

KŌ　コウ 　GYŌ　ギョウ 　AN　 アン

Japanese reading (Kun-yomi, notice hiragana):

i.ku　い.く　 yu.ku　ゆ.く -yu.ki　ーゆ.き -yuki　ーゆき -i.ki　ーい.き  -iki　ーいき

okona.u　おこな.う oko.nau   おこ.なう

Please note that in the examples above, EVERYTHING BEFORE THE DOT WILL BE THE KANJI; EVERYTHING AFTER THE DOT WILL BE HIRAGANA.

So you see that "Iku" can also be read "Yuku," even though it is spelled "Iku" for BOTH WORDS. In this case, it sometimes depends on politeness levels how it is read. But that's for later.

So you see, even ONE kanji can be a very complicated set of little bits of information. Thankfully, kanji like this are pretty rare. Usually it is only the MOST COMMON kanji that are this complex, and you will be learning all of them pretty early on. Most of the rest of the 1,945 kanji usually have only one reading and are either used in a compound, or in a verb.