Let's talk about Kanji

As many of you know, I am hoping to go teach English in Japan next year. While not required, in preparation I have begun to study Japanese. So to help me out I'm going to blog a little bit about what I am learning, mainly Kanji, which is probably the first big hurdle to learning to read Japanese.

The Japanese use four character sets. First there is Romanji, which we are all familiar with. Romanji literally means, “Roman Characters,” and it is the Latin alphabet we have all come to know and love.

Secondly and thirdly there is the Kana: Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana is a Japanese phonetic alphabet comprised of about 110 sounds that is used for Japanese words. For instance, みどり, which is “midori” in Romaji, and means “green” in English.

Katakana is a Japanese phonetic alphabet for foreign loanwords and onomatopoeia, and some names. An example would be バレット, which in Romaji is “Baretto” and “Barrett” in English. For every hiragana there is a katakana.

Finally there are the Kanji (漢字), literally meaning “Chinese characters”. There are thousands of Kanji. However to pass the hardest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test you need to know just under 2000. Each individual kanji has a meaning. For instance in the above compound 漢 means “Sino-” or “China” and “字” means “character. Also each kanji comes with readings, sometimes several of them.

The readings come in two varieties:
On'yomi, which is basically the Japanese estimation of the Chinese pronunciation when the character was brought to Japan. The “on” readings are typically used in kanji compounds. For instance the on reading for 字 is “ji”.
Kun'yomi, is the native Japanese reading and is basically the Japanese word that meant whatever the kanji stood for when it was introduced. Generally when a kanji is representing a single word then you use the “kun” reading. There are exceptions to this though as the Japanese word for “book” is “hon” which is the on reading of 本 (this kanji has more meanings than just book).

As you can see, learning the read Kanji is a bit of a juggling act for an English speaker. We have to identify the character and learn how to tell it apart from others (for instance 日(day) and 目(eye). We have to learn what that character means. Then we have to learn the different readings for that character and how it fits into various kanji compounds. For instance 日本語 which is read “nihongo” and means Japanese language.

The method I've decided to employ to help me with Kanji is the Heisig method which is in the book “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig, and covers a little over 2000 kanji. In his book Mr. Heisig attaches a meaning and story to each kanji and slowly builds more and more kanji from more basic primitives. The idea is that adults learn better using their imaginations rather than rote memorization. There are really strong points to his method, as generally I can get the kanji provided I can recall the story. Therefore, the trickiest part for me is matching the story to the meaning (he wants to you to go from meaning to kanji, as he says that going form kanji to meaning will naturally flow). I might add it is harder to go from meaning to kaji than from kanji to meaning. If I see a kanji I've review I normally nail its meaning right away, but remembering how to write the kanji when I see the meaning is trickier. I think that is mostly because when you see the kanji you can visualize the associated story, but it is more difficult to recall the story if you are working from the meaning.

Since I am working on getting the Kanji down right now I am going to try to blog about one kanji per day as an additional method of helping me to remember, hopefully without undermining the method that I have decided to employ to help me get the kanji down. Generally I'll be sticking to kanji I am having a harder time remembering, and will do so, hopefully, while avoiding any copyright issues. Today though I am going to start with something more fun.

猫

This is the kanj for cat and its kun reading is “neko”. The kanji itself is made up of three primitives. To the left is a primitive Heisig identifies as “dog” and it is a squished version of犬 (at least according to him it is), which is the kanji for dog. On the top right is a primitive that Heisig identifies as flower, and it is not a stand alone kanji. On the bottom right is the kanji for “rice field”, 田. Heisig has a story involving all three elements to help people remember the kanji's meaning, but that's for him to tell, not me (because I don't want to run afoul of IP law).

But I like cats, the internet likes cats, and maybe you do too, so I've shared this with you.
It is used in compounds like:
猫舌 (nekojita) which is the dislike of very hot food or drink.
猫背 (nekoze) which means bent back.
At perhaps a few others.

That's it for today, thanks for reading.