Japanese lessons

In parallel to the Hiragana and Katakana writing systems, Kanji is the third writing system of the Japanese language and is by far the most complicated. The word "Kanji" literally means "Chinese character", simply because Japanese people started using the Chinese writing system many centuries ago.

Here are a few examples of Kanji:

Kanji are ideograms. This means that beyond a simple audio and graphic representation, they each convey one or more meanings. The Roman alphabet by itself has no meaning unless you use it to create words, whereas in Japanese, each Kanji always has its own meaning.

It is also important to notice that Kanji cannot be used without Hiragana and Katakana in a sentence. When learning the language you will see that the verb forms are always written in Hiragana, and most foreign words are written in Katakana. And quite often, the name of cities that are generally written in Kanji will also be shown in Hiragana on flyers, billboards, etc. The 3 writing systems are used in parallel in written Japanese, and the choice of using one instead of the other for a word is set by usage conventions or for stylistic reasons.

"Is each Kanji different? Do I have to learn how to write Kanji that will all be different from one another?" In fact, the more Kanji you know, the easier it gets. Why? Because Kanji are composed of one graphical element or more that will also be used in other Kanji. There are thousands of Kanji, but there are only 214 elements that compose them. With these 214 elements we are able to draw every Kanji.

The following example shows how the Kanji for « bark » is constructed from two elements that belong to the list of 214 radicals.

Among the elements that compose a Kanji character, one is more important than the others. This is called the radical. It is that part that often carries the main meaning of the character. Knowing that radical often makes it easier to memorize a Kanji.

Although Kanji originated from China, the way you read Japanese Kanji and Chinese Kanji is different since there are different ways to pronounce a Japanese Kanji. It is the word in which the Kanji is included and the context in which it is used that indicates the correct way to read each Kanji. It is complicated: that’s why it is more interesting to learn Kanji when found in a word instead of learning Kanji on their own.

In Japanese, there are two main types of reading for Kanji: the ON reading, which is the Chinese pronunciation, and the KUN reading, which is the Japanese pronunciation. You will need to know when to use one or the other. Once again, if you learn the Kanji when you encounter them within a word, you will not have to worry about that. It is undoubtedly more efficient to know a lot of words without knowing each and every pronunciation for the kanji used in it, rather than mastering all the possible ways to read a Kanji character without knowing a word that uses it.

You cannot simply write Kanji any way you want. Fortunately, respecting the stroke order is not that hard since there are rules on that matter, and these rules really make the learning process easier. Furthermore, the rules concerning the strokes will be well assimilated once you have learned a hundred Kanji or so, and they become almost natural. Ultimately, that constraint is not really a constraint and greatly helps to memorize the Kanji. In fact, writing a character the same way every time rather than drawing Kanji on the spur of the moment will let you quickly acquire automatic reflexes when it comes to writing Kanji

In addition, these rules help define the count of strokes used in writing a character. In most dictionaries a character can be found according to the number of strokes used to write it, so being able to count the number of strokes is important, even if it's only for the sake of looking up a Kanji character in a dictionary. By mastering the 214 radicals, you will know the number of strokes used in a Kanji very easily. But, if you do not master the radicals, practice with writing Kanji and experience will let you acquire this skill quickly too.

The goal of this lesson is not to give all the rules and methods used to draw Kanji. If you want to learn more about Kanji, check the Kanji file in the Multimedia section of the website.

Although there are thousands of Kanji that exist, they are organized according to their usage to form the Jouyou Kanji. The different Jouyou can be seen as levels. Jouyou 1, for example, is a list of Kanji that a Japanese student learns at the beginning of his schooling. Knowing every Jouyou leads you to master around 2000 Kanji. Japan-Activator website offers a Kanji training tool organizing them in levels matching the different levels found in the Jouyou list.

In Japan, knowing a lot of Kanji is a sign of intelligence. And in the same way, making a mistake on a Kanji, or even worse, using hiragana when a kanji could have been used is a sign of ignorance.

Another property of Kanji is frequency. As implied by the name, it organizes Kanji from the most frequently used to the less commonly used (a frequency of 1 indicates the Kanji that are most frequently used). It is set according to how many times a Kanji character appears in the Japanese newspapers. In fact, this method is a major issue because it distorts the real frequency of some of the Kanji. In newspapers you will often find articles dealing with politics for example, which gives Kanji related to politics a higher frequency than some of the Kanji more frequently used outside the newspapers. For that reason, even though frequency is interesting, you should not make the mistake of learning Kanji by their order in the ranking of frequency.