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」. This is made with the kanji for fire, 火, then mountain, 山。”Fire mountain”- what do you think this means? Together, they make “kazan”- volcano.

Kanji Readings

In order to know the readings of kanji and kanji compounds, you must learn the “kunyomi” and “onyomi” for the kanji.

音読み, onyomi, are readings derived from Chinese pronunciations (as kanji were adapted from the Chinese language)

訓読み, kunyomi, are the original Japanese readings.

Earlier, we talked about the kanji for Volcano, 火山。The second Kanji in this compound is the kanji for “mountain”.

Mountain, 山, has the kunyomi “yama” and onyomi “san”. When read by itself, 山 is pronounced “yama” and simply means mountain. However, when after the name of a mountain (like mount Fuji) it becomes “san”. 富士山, “Fujisan”, means “Mount Fuji”. Additionally, when put after many kanji, this “san” sounds turns into “zan”- a common occurrence of kanji compounds’ secondary components getting slightly different sounds. That is why volcano is “kazan”, and not “kasan”.

One thing that’s very cool about kanji is that they are pictographs. For some kanji, it makes sense why they mean what they do. For example, 目 means eye, 口 means mouth, For example, 目 means eye, 口 means mouth, and 山 means mountain. If you turn 目 sideways, imagine 口 as an open mouth, and pretend 山 makes up three mountain peaks, it becomes a little easier to remember these characters. Some kanji are made up of multiple other kanji- called “radicals”- like 頭、the kanji for “head”. Can you spot two kanji discussed above here? The kanji for “eye” and “mouth”, as well as some other radicals, make up this kanji. Sometimes, you can guess kanji meanings just based off the radicals- just like how sometimes you can guess compound meanings.

There is a lot to know about kanji in order to understand, pronounce, and write them correctly. Some get very complicated- like 憂鬱- and are hard to write without practice. Furthermore, kanji have specific “stroke orders”- the way which you should write each in order to write them truly correct. There’s a lot to know, and I wasn’t able to go over everything in-depth today.

Do you have any questions about kanji? Are there any kanji you want to know? Let me know!