Now that I'm confident with reading and writing hiragana and katakana (I'm not that good with katakana yet but I'm working on it), it's time to learn Kanji. I've been dreading this moment, mainly because kanji seems so complicated, but there's no better time than right now.
What is Kanji?
Kanji (漢字, literally "characters from Han China") are Chinese characters used in Japanese. However, while some kanji and Chinese characters are mutually readable, many more are not. In addition to characters that have different meanings in Japanese, and characters that have identical meanings but are written differently, there are also characters peculiar to Japanese known as kokuji (国字; literally "national characters"). Kokuji are also known as wasei kanji (和製漢字; literally "Chinese characters made in Japan"). There are hundreds of kokuji, and although some are rarely used, many others have become important additions to the written Japanese language. These include:
峠 tōge (mountain pass)
榊 sakaki (sakaki tree, genus Camellia)
畑 hatake (field of crops)
辻 tsuji (crossroads, street)
働 dō, hatara(ku) (work)
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different than their original Chinese meanings. These kanji are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters such as:
沖 oki (offing, offshore)
森 mori (forest)
椿 tsubaki (Camellia japonicus)
The same kanji character can sometimes be written in two different ways, 旧字体 (kyū-jitai; lit. "old character") and 新字体 (shin-jitai; "new character"). The following are some examples of kyū-jitai followed by the corresponding shin-jitai:
國 国 kuni (country)
號 号 gō (number)
變 変 hen, ka(waru) (change)
Kyū-jitai were used before the end of World War II, but after the war the government introduced the simplified shin-jitai. Some of the new characters are similar to simplified characters used in the People's Republic of China, but the two are essentially different things.
There are also Chinese characters that are only used phonetically in Japanese (当て字 ateji), and many Chinese characters that are not used in Japanese at all.
Readings
A kanji character may have several (in rare cases ten or more) possible pronunciations, depending on its context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and location in the sentence. These pronunciations, or readings, are typically categorized as either onyomi or kunyomi (often abbreviated on and kun).
Onyomi
The onyomi (音読み) of a kanji (also called its on reading or Chinese reading) is based on the Japanese approximation of the original Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were reintroduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple onyomi (and often multiple meanings as well). Contrariwise, wasei kanji typically have no onyomi at all.
Onyomi are phonologically characterized by their tendency toward single-syllable readings, since each character expressed a single Chinese syllable. However, tonality aside, most Chinese syllables did not fit the largely consonant-vowel syllables of Japanese. Thus most onyomi are composed of two moras (syllables or beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or syllabic n, chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese.
Onyomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words (熟語 jukugo), many of which are the result of the adoption (along with the kanji themselves) of Chinese words for concepts that either didn't exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words.
Kunyomi
The kunyomi (訓読み) of a kanji (also called its kun reading, Japanese reading, or somewhat misleadingly its native reading) is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamatokotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. Again, there can be multiple kun readings for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kunyomi at all.
For instance, the kanji for east, 東, has the on reading tō. However, Japanese already had a word for east, pronounced higashi (or sometimes azuma). Thus, the kanji character 東 had the latter pronunciations grafted onto it as kunyomi. However, the kanji 寸, denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (slightly over an inch), had no native Japanese equivalent; thus it has only its onyomi, sun.
Kunyomi are characterized by the strict (consonant)vowel syllable structure common to yamatokotoba, passingly similar to that of the nearby Polynesian languages. Most noun or adjective kunyomi are two to three syllables long, while verb kunyomi are more often one or two syllables in length (not counting trailing hiragana called okurigana, although those are usually considered part of the reading).
Other readings
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori, which are mostly used for people's names, and are generally closely related to the kunyomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori (or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere).
Gikun (義訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual onyomi or kunyomi, but are instead connected by the meaning of the written and spoken phrases. For example, the compound 一寸 might be read issun, meaning "one sun", but it is more often used to write the indivisible word chotto, "a little". Gikun also feature in some Japanese family names.
Many ateji (kanji used only for their phonetic value) have meanings derived from their usage: for example, the now-archaic 亜細亜 ajia was formerly used to write "Asia" in kanji; the character 亜 now means Asia in such compounds as 東亜 tōa, "East Asia". From the written 亜米利加 amerika, the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage 米国 beikoku, literally "rice country" but meaning "United States of America".
When to use which reading
The division between onyomi and kunyomi can seem arbitrary and unnecessarily difficult to the learner of Japanese. Words for similar concepts, such as east (東), north (北) and northeast (東北), can have completely different pronunciations: the kun readings higashi and kita are used for the first two, while the on reading tōhoku is used for the third. However, the situation is actually no less coherent than the similar mixture of pronunciations in English which resulted from similar borrowings from other languages.
To complicate the matter, there are two basic guidelines for determining the pronunciation of a particular kanji in a given context. First, and most simply, kanji occurring in compounds are almost always read using onyomi. These sorts of words are sometimes called jukugo (熟語). For example, 情報 jōhō "information", 半月 hangetsu "half-moon", and 革命家 kakumeika "[a] revolutionary" all follow this pattern.
Secondly, kanji occurring in isolation -- that is, written adjacent only to kana, not to other kanji -- are typically read using their kunyomi. Together with their okurigana, if any, they generally function either as a noun or as an inflected adjective or verb: e.g. 月 tsuki "moon", 情け nasake "sympathy", 赤い akai "red", 建てる tateru "to build". The rare kanji compounds that also have okurigana, such as 空揚げ karaage "fried" and 名無し nanashi "nameless", also fall into this category.
There are numerous exceptions to both rules. 赤金 akakane "copper", 日傘 higasa "parasol", and the famous 神風 kamikaze "divine wind" all use kunyomi despite being simple kanji compounds. Fortunately, most exceptions to the second rule are simple nouns: 愛 ai "love", 禅 Zen, 点 ten "mark, dot".
The situation is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one onyomi: witness 説明 setsumei "explanation" versus 灯明 tōmyō "light offered to a god".
There are even kanji compounds that use a mixture of onyomi and kunyomi, known as jūbako (重箱) words. The word jūbako itself is an example: the first character is read using onyomi, the second kunyomi. Other examples include 金色 kiniro "golden" (on-kun) and 影法師 kagebōshi "silhouette" (kun-on-on).
Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō) and Japan itself (日本 Nihon or rarely Nippon) are read with onyomi. However, by far the vast majority of Japanese place names are read with kunyomi (e.g. 大阪 Ōsaka, 青森 Aomori, 箱根 Hakone). Family names are also usually read with kunyomi (e.g., 山田 Yamada, 田中 Tanaka, 鈴木 Suzuki). Personal names, although they are not typically considered jūbako, often contain mixtures of kunyomi, onyomi, and nanori, and are generally only readable with some experience (e.g., 大助 Daisuke [on-kun], 夏美 Natsumi [kun-on]).
Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji will often have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as furigana (small kana written above the character) or kumimoji (those printed to the side). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners and manga (comics). It is also used in newspapers for rare or unusual readings and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji.
Whew, now I'm really scared (and excited at the same time)! That was just an introduction to kanji. In future posts, I'll be learning each individual character and it's meaning. There are 1945 characters the Japanese government recommends as a guideline for the Japanese press and for the general writing of Japanese by both native and non-native speakers. I can hardly wait.
Source
Japan Reference
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