Kanji: Kanji is a system of writing used in Japan, borrowed from China. It's basically a picture that is a word. For instance..
This is a kanji that means "Day" There are quite a few different ways to read this kanji's sound. You can say "Hee" "Bee" "Nichi" "Jitsu" "Ka". But you can't just pick which ever you like. It'll confuse Japanese people. In different combinations with other Kanji, it's read a different way.You cannot tell what a Kanji's reading is just by looking at it. The only way is by either guessing based on whats around it, (For instance if you know the word for Post Office and you sound out the surrounding Kanji, you could figure it out) or by memorizing. The only REAL way is to memorize, memorize, memorize, and memorize. You can get by in Japan by knowing about 800 or 900 Kanji. (In order to graduate middle school in Japan, a student must know 900 Kanji, or so I am told.) When I asked my host mom how many Kanji she knows, she told me "2,300" for me to know this many kanji would be insane. One day when there is a way to pull a "Matrix" and download stuff into our brains, I'll be mad that I spent so much time trying to memorize kanji.
For us who speak english, imagine this scenario... The word "person" we know the sound of each letter and that in that combination it sounds liek "person" If I put up a random arrangment of letters liek "Jifdren" We could all sound that out. Now Imagine if when we wrote "person" instead of spelling it we drew a small picture. When we put it next to the picture for the word "fire" it wouldn't be said as "Fire Person" it'd be "Fire Fighter" the sound of the "Person" picture would be changed. What if we put it next to "Airplane"? It'd probably become "Flight Attendant" The picture we use for "Airplane" would then sound like "Flight" and Person would then sound like "Attendant". Confused yet? Great. That's how Japanese works pretty much. Sometimes you can understand the meaning of the Kanji combinations but not know their reading, or sometimes you can know the reading and not the meaning.
Kanji is so weird and difficult there are a number of game shows on TV that involve Japanese contestants having to guess the reading for certain Kanji. It's kind of like the "spelling bee" of Japan I guess. The good thing with learning a language that uses our same writing system is that you can read everything right off the bat. I'm not trying to say Japanese is sooooo much harder, all languages are hard to learn. What I am saying is that, if you know of a place that can download languages into my brain please send me their phone number.
4 comments:
Chinese is the same way. By having to learn so many pictographs the general population was prevented from advancing their education at the rapid rate of the elite intellectuals and an advanced civilization slowed its progress considerably. Are the Japanese considering romanizing their language by switching to an alphabet?
Chinese is different. It`s harder. Japanese is, in a way, simplified Chinese. Japanese also has 2 systems of `letters` which are used to spell the sound of the pictograph when you are learning them. They also appear for conjugating and particles. Chinese has no such thing.
mike..i think you should learn chinese..i mean you already know japanese and they are like the same thing. (PopPop told me to write that...he's sitting right here next to me and he's mad you let a man slap you, he says he gave you the gun for a reason...)
maybe there is somr tape you can play while you are sleeping that will download all the info into your head. if not, well I guess you will just have to actually learn all those thousands od Kanji. I myself could naver do it. Way too much patience involved...and we all know what a patient I am.
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