Japanese Characters
-
As I promised, today I'm going to talk about the characters used in Japanese.If you purchased Platinum Japanese, you probably have found a booklet titled Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese. If you purchased our online course, you can download the same material in a .pdf format. This guide is all you need to understand the Japanese writing system, learn to read and write all the hiragana and katakana characters, and learn to read and write some of the kanji characters.Here's a brief introduction of the three types of characters:
- Katakana - mainly used to write words and names of foreign origin. (e.g. バナナ banana 'banana')
- Kanji - used for content words such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. (e.g. 学生 gakusee 'student')
- Hiragana - Everything that is not represented in katakana or kanji is written in hiragana. This includes, but not limited to, function words such as particles and inflectional endings. (e.g. 食べる taberu 'to eat' -- the first character is kanji, but the other two characters are hiragana; it's the inflectional ending of present tense affirmative)
There are 47 hiragana characters and 47 katakana characters. These are the two sets of characters that you want to start with. There are at least a few thousand kanji characters, and believe me there are many kanji that I can't even read or write!In Essential Japanese, no kanji is used. All the content words are written in hiragana instead of kanji. You'll learn hiragana and katakana little by little in Essential Japanese.In Intermediate Japanese and Advanced Japanese, kanji is used as many as an average adult native Japanese speaker would use. But not to worry! We have a reading aid called furigana (small hiragana printed above kanji) indicating its pronunciation.If you'd rather learn to only speak Japanese for now, that's fine too! We put the pronunciation in Roman alphabet next to each and every Japanese expression, so you can still learn to speak Japanese. Remember that at Living Language, you can always customize your learning experience the way it fits you!Also don't worry about reading and writing Japanese characters when you sign up for an eTutor session. Every session is conversational, and if there is any need for me to write Japanese on the "white board", I'll use Roman alphabet.I'll keep adding helpful information and learning tips on Japanese characters to this thread. If you have any questions about the characters, feel free add a post here!-Sakura -
Kanji are the Chinese characters, right? Although I think some of them have different meanings in Japanese.
-
That's right, Grace. Kanji are the Chinese characters. I'm not sure if they're identical, or modified, or if they have slightly different meanings in Japanese. I'll let our expert Sakura comment on that!
-
Hi Grace!Thank you for your great question! And Thank you Chris for jumping in. I apologize for not noticing your question for a few days. I'll definitely check the forum more frequently!Yes, kanji are the Chinese characters.Japan started to "import" Chinese characters in the 5th century. The characters have been modified to fit the Japanese language. Most notably, Japanese-style pronunciations were assigned to most characters (this reading is called "kun reading").The meaning of an individual character is actually not so different in the Japanese and the Chinese languages. However, the choice of which character (or combination of characters) to use to express a particular word may be different.For example, in Chinese, newspaper is expressed by the combination of characters 報(to inform) and 紙(paper). In Japanese, it's expressed by the combination of characters 新(new) and 聞(to hear).In China, simplified characters have been used since around 1960s. In Japan, basically traditional characters are used but some of the characters have been simplified. These simplified characters used in Japan are not the same as the simplified characters used in China.I hope this helps! If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask!-Sakura (^-^)/
-
That's fascinating, arigato! Sorry to jump all over Grace's question, but after reading your response, Sakura, I have another quick question.Is it the case (I think so, but just checking) that there was very little or no phonological borrowing with those characters? In other words, 紙(paper) corresponded to one set of sounds in Chinese, and a totally different set in Japanese, and the borrowing of the character didn't change this, right? Or did it?Another question... I'm not sure if the combination of characters for newspaper is directly, or partially, related to the pronunciation in Chinese. I think so, but I'm not entirely sure. But in Japanese, is 新 聞 a straightforward combination of 新(new) and 聞(to hear)? Newspaper is shinbun, right? But new is atarashii, and hear is chiku, or something, so I think I'm answering my own question. Is there anything else to the story?
-
Thanks for your follow-up questions! In fact, the Japanese added Japanese-style pronunciations on top of the original Chinese pronunciations.So basically, a sigle kanji character usually has more possible readings in Japanese than in Chinese. The Japanese-style pronunciations are called the KUN readings, and the Chinese-style pronunciations are called the ON readings.For example, 新聞 is pronounced with the ON readings of the two characters: 新(shin)聞(bun). The basic rule is that when a combination of kanji is used to express a noun, the ON reading is applied. On the other hand, 新しい(atarashii - "new") and 聞く (kiku - "to hear/listen") are the KUN readings. As you see, these words are "one kanji character + hiragana". When you see that sort of composition, you apply the KUN reading.I should also add that, even though the ON readings are basically the Chinese-style readings, the actual pronunciations are not "identical". The ON readings are Chinese influenced, but of course the Japanese phonetic and phonological rules have been heavily applied. As the result, the ON readings are close but not identical to the real Chinese readings.-Sakura (^-^)/
-
Very cool. Thanks.
-
Just a quick question about the character for "ji". In hiragana the book states that one character is almost always used and the other is rarely used. However it does not say if it's the same for katana. I would use the charaters in this question, but for some reason I can't find a decent hiragana and katakana app in the android market.
-
Thanks for asking! The katakana ヂ、just like the hiragana ぢ is rarely used in the modern Japanese language. These characters were used more often before the 17th century.
-
FMP: I like WriteKana by SJC Linguistics. You can trace the kana with your fingers, which isn't entirely like using a pen, but still good practice. (You have to shake your phone to erase what you've written. Took me forever to figure that out!) There are also a few other useful modes. The audio for the sounds isn't wonderful, but certainly enough to be useful.
-
Thanks to both of you. I'll definately check out the link Christopher.
-
It looks like they also have a WriteKanji app. It's definitely helping me recognize katakana and hiragana. My handwriting isn't too wonderful yet, though!
