Question about words such as iku.

[fridgeman]

行く is the word iku (ill go; or something along those lines)
but am I supposed to be memorizing the kanji-hiragana combination for iku in order to understand it or is there a simpler way? Is there perhaps a way that I can break it up or understand its meaning by obtaining each symbols purpose and meaning and combining them? All I get from translating it symbol by symbol is: going and ku. The only way for me to understand that those symbols mean iku is for me to memorize the symbols used in iku right?

[samihu]

I'm not quite sure if I understand your question right, but here it goes...

行く (iku) is the verb "to go". It is in the plain/dictionary form. Depending on how it is used in the sentence it may conjugate to 行きます(ikimasu)，行きました(ikimashita)、行って(itte)、行った(itta)、行きたい(ikitai), etc. Sort of like in English how you have "I go", "He goes", "We went", "She would have been going", etc, except in many cases in Japanese they conjugate for different things.

The character 行 with this verb will be pronounced as い(i) (as opposed to with other words that also have that character, but it is pronounced differently).

I hope that helped!

[fridgeman]

I'm not quite sure if I understand your question right, but here it goes...

行く (iku) is the verb "to go". It is in the plain/dictionary form. Depending on how it is used in the sentence it may conjugate to 行きます(ikimasu)，行きました(ikimashita)、行って(itte)、行った(itta)、行きたい(ikitai), etc. Sort of like in English how you have "I go", "He goes", "We went", "She would have been going", etc, except in many cases in Japanese they conjugate for different things.

The character 行 with this verb will be pronounced as い(i) (as opposed to with other words that also have that character, but it is pronounced differently).

I hope that helped!

i know what it means but, its kind of like this: in english I need to memorize what letters make up the word in order to recognize the word that is formed with letters. ex: pie, I need to know the word pie first and what letters are used and how they are arranged in order to understand what is being said.
Is this the same in japanese, do I need to memorize what the symbols are in a certain word and how they are arranged in order to recognize the word? ex: for 行く, is it possible to derive the romaji equivalent of iku or the translation of "I'll go" by just viewing each symbols' individual meaning and combining them? Or would you need to actually memorize the word iku and its symbols: 行く in order to recognize that
行く = iku.

[samihu]

Hiragana have no meaning in and of themselves. They are just the sounds. So　く　is just く。Just like the letter 'k' is just the letter 'k'. Kanji have meaning.　行　has the meaning of to go/travel/perform/act. So knowing the kanji's meaning can help give you an idea of the word's meaning. Like 飛行機 (hi-kou-ki) is made up of the characters for "fly", "go/travel", and "machine". The word means airplane. Granted, it's not always that straightforward, but it definitely helps.

Also, the same letters/hiragana can have different kanji, and thus different meanings。育 which can also be romanized as "iku", and can written in hiragana as いく、has the meaning of to raise/bring up (eg. a child)

So the kanji are helpful in deriving meaning, but not so much the hiragana/romaji, but in context it should generally be not too hard to figure out.

[QuackingShoe]

I still don't really understand what you're asking. 行く is いく is iku is 行く. I don't know what you're getting at talking about deriving romaji from symbols and things. い is is equivallent to 'i', く is equivallent to 'ku'. 行 is a kanji and it's pronunciation varies depending on what word it's used in, but in this one, it's covering the い part of the word いく, thus 行く.

The only thing I can guess is that you don't know that the hiragana and katakana are phonetic systems, and may misunderstand a couple things about the kanji as well. If this is the case, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system and give a brisk read-through of the main page and the three linked pages for kanji, hiragana, and katakana.


Also, I can't tell, you may already understand this, but it may be worth pointing out that, no, people don't memorize that 行く is iku, but rather that 行く is いく. Romaji is merely an outside tool used for a few misc purposes, one of which is early (foreign) Japanese language instruction. The basic phonetics of the language are in kana, which is one of the main reasons comments on deriving the romaji from kana confuse me. I could possibly understand what you meant if you were asking about how kanji hold different pronunciations in various contexts, but kana are simply what they are, and there are no tricks to them. 行く would always be (something)ku because く is ku and that's that.


Oh standard disclaimer: Don't be put off by my tone or whatever. I often come off differently than I intend to while explaining things. I am legitimately hoping that you find the answer to your question here.