The Japanese Alphabet: Kanji
What are Japanese Pictographs? Last time, we looked at Hiragana and Katakana, the two writing systems that can be used to write any word in Japanese. However, there is a third writing system- Kanji, with over 7,000 characters to learn. Kanji Basics Kanji are symbols which represent ideas or words, and can be read differently based off of their context. For example, the kanji for ‘book’ 「本」 is read simply as ほん , “hon”, ‘book’ by itself. However, when combined with other kanji, its meaning changes. When combined for the kanji for ‘thing’ 「物」、 you form a kanji compound meaning “genuine thing”- ほんもの , “honmono”. Other kanji get completely different pronunciations based off of their context as well. For example, the kanji for “now”, 「今」、 ”ima” becomes “kon” with some other kanji, used to make words like 今夏、 ”konka”, ‘this summer’. Sometimes, even if you don’t know the secondary readings of kanji, you can guess the meaning of compounds. For example, the following compound: 「火山」