Oh man, this is such a good question! Thank you for asking it!! Today, let’s talk about the basics of kanji.
(Let me just preface this by saying that I have done absolutely zero formal study of Chinese, so I’m not going to talk much about kanji usage in China and countries other than Japan.)
Origins of Kanji
漢字 kanji, or Chinese characters, are a form of writing that the Japanese imported from China in the 5th Century AD. But before we get to talking about Japan, let’s very briefly cover their history in China.
Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world, first used in China in the late second millennium BC. At the time, most words in Old Chinese were monosyllabic, and one character denoted one word. Nowadays, as language, society, and culture has become more complex, many words are multi-syllabic and require multiple characters.
How Kanji Are Formed
Anyone who has taken it upon themselves to learn some kanji has probably seen something like the above image showing kanji’s roots as a drawing. Characters that depict the item or idea they represent like these kanji are called pictograms and ideograms respectively.
However, even when the Chinese writing system was still in its infancy, pictograms and ideograms accounted for only a small percent of the characters. The majority of Chinese characters were created using the Rebus Principle. The rebus principle is a linguistic term for the use of existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words.
An English example of the rebus principle would be writing “I can see you” as “Eye can sea ewe.” Regardless of the meaning of “eye,” “sea,” and “ewe,” their pronunciation is the same as “I,” “see,” and “you.”
Many Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds. Phono means “sound” or “pronunciation” and semantic means “meaning.” So in other words, the character reveals a hint not only the pronunciation but also its meaning. Let’s take a look at a couple examples taken from Japanese, since I don’t speak a word of Chinese.
This 長 will become the phonological aspect for the following kanji.
- 帳 notebook, account book, chou
The 巾 on the left means “cloth” or “scroll,” which is what records would have been written on or bound in when this kanji was invented.
- 張 lengthen, stretch, chou
The 弓 on the left means “bow” (as in the weapon), and you can imagine stretching the bowstring to fire.
Figuring out these phonological aspects and their patterns is what really helped accelerate my Japanese reading abilities. I’m kinda a weirdo about picking up patterns like this, and I basically internalized them by reading. A. LOT.
Another super important aspect of kanji is the radicals.
Radicals are Radical, Yo
Radicals, or 部首 bushu, are the building blocks of kanji. They provide meaning and pronunciation to the characters.
For example, the kanji 部 is composed of 3 radicals:
- 立
- 口
- ⻏
And there’s only 214 radicals to memorize!
Ahahahahaha why did I choose this language to study
It’s actually not that bad, though. Many of the radicals in this list are the same radical just in a different place within the kanji. And some of the radicals themselves are kanji, like the 長, 弓, and 巾 radicals from up above. Also, some of them are pretty seldom used. So don’t panic. Deep breaths. We’re gonna get through this.
I think I’d like to make a separate post about radicals and their meanings, or maybe make an individual segment on each radical in the future, so I’m not going to talk a ton about them in this post. For now, just know that they play an important role in helping you distinguish kanji from one another.
Pronouncing the Kanji: On-yomi or Kun-yomi
Oh boy, now we get to what is arguably one of the most difficult aspects of the Japanese language (both for foreigners and native speakers alike).
1 kanji, 11 different ways to pronounce it. And it’s one of the most commonly used kanji in Japanese.
I should’ve just studied Spanish
To be fair, I picked a very extreme example of a kanji with a ton of readings. For the most part, kanji tend to have just two readings, the on-yomi and kun-yomi.
- 音読み On-yomi (lit. “sound reading”)
- ★ On-yomi is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced.
- ★ Often, due to the vast differences in Chinese and Japanese phonology and the dynamic nature of language, the Modern Chinese reading and Japanese on-yomi of the same character do not match, though you may be able to see a similarity in them.
- ★ Because on-yomi represent the Chinese reading, it is standard to write the on-yomi in katakana.
- 訓読み Kun-yomi (lit. “meaning reading")
- ★ Kun-yomi is based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or 大和言葉 yamato kotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced.
- ★ Some kanji do not have a kun-yomi.
- ★ Because kun-yomi represent the native Japanese reading, it is standard to write the kun-yomi in hiragana.
Let’s take a look at a compound kanji word and examine its possible readings.
今日, today
The most common reading for this word is kyou, which is the kun-yomi.
However, it can also be read as kon’nichi, which is the on-yomi.
Probably 9 times out of 10 it will be read as kyou, but kon’nichi is more formal and you do see it on occasion. Also, konnichiwa is technically written as 今日は, even though this greeting is written in hiragana 99.99% of the time.
Sow how can you tell when a word should be on-yomi or kun-yomi?
Okurigana are kana suffixes following kanji stems. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way.
For example, in the word 読みます yomimasu (read, polite, present tense), the みます (mimasu) is okurigana providing the inflection of the verb.
Basically, if you see okurigana, the reading will almost always be kun-yomi.
2. Surnames are almost always kun-yomi.
This makes sense, because kun-yomi is the native Japanese reading and these are the last names of Japanese people haha.
3. If a word is made of 2 kanji, generally both kanji will be on- or kun-yomi.
this is the kun-yomi for both kanji.
this is the kun-yomi for both kanji.
this is the on-yomi for both kanji.
This is the on-yomi for both kanji.
Of course, there are exceptions to all of the above guidelines I’ve given you. That’s what makes learning Japanese hell.
