What exactly are Kanji, how do they work?

[8mbdavis8_514589]

Please do not tell me about the history of Kanji! I know where they come from and why they exist! I know that they have two kinds of readings, the Chinese Onyomi and the Japanese Kunyomi! I know quite a bit about Japanese, but I can't find anything going into extreme detail about what Kanji is.
Kanji seem to have their own meanings, but from what I've seen they represent syllables in a word, sometimes not even a whole word. Forgive me if I am making a mistake, but I believe an example of this would be 食, meaning "to eat". The Kunyomi of 食 is "た", but it isn't a word on its own and needs to have "べる" added to it to make it "たべる". So are Kanji symbols that are not words but still have meanings, and are used as letters of some kind where even if it is possible to phonetically spell a word using other Kanji you have to use the ones with the correct meanings?
I also have a problem with Onyomi and Kunyomi.
Are Onyomi actually used as words or only as parts of words? What I mean by this is, is it possible to say a sentence with only Kunyomi words, and then say the exact same thing with only Onyomi words? It might seem like a stupid thing to ask regardless of what the answer is, but I'm having trouble understanding because I'm seeing Onyomi and Kunyomi as two languages to an extant.
Is it sort of like how we have Latin, Greek, French, and German roots, suffixes, and prefixes? "In" is from Latin(I'm 99% sure...) but doesn't have any meaning on its own but becomes part of words like incredible, or infamous, or how words may be changed or have things added to change their meanings, for example did, does, do all have the same root but are changes, or will, would, were, and won't where they are all changed but are all a different form of the same word and where won't is even changed to where it has a part that otherwise wouldn't be a word "wo".

I hope I'm not the only one who has any idea what I mean, but thank you for reading. If you don't know exactly what I am asking I would be more than elated if you just told me EVERYTHING about how Kanji work from the smallest detail.
Thank you.

[jim.schuler]

Kanji seem to have their own meanings, but from what I've seen they represent syllables in a word, sometimes not even a whole word.

Sometimes they are used purely for how they sound, true. When this happens for words (not names), it's called ateji.

Forgive me if I am making a mistake, but I believe an example of this would be 食, meaning "to eat". The Kunyomi of 食 is "た", but it isn't a word on its own and needs to have "べる" added to it to make it "たべる". So are Kanji symbols that are not words but still have meanings, and are used as letters of some kind where even if it is possible to phonetically spell a word using other Kanji you have to use the ones with the correct meanings?

To put it simply, Kanji are the meaning and Hiragana are the grammar. 食 is "eat," but the "べる" is telling you how "eat" is: you will eat instead of have eaten instead of can eat instead of want to eat instead of making someone eat etc., etc. That hiragana tail exists to be conjugated, so you will find it with verbs and i-adjectives, while nouns won't have it.

So your question can be rephrased as "Are kunyomi readings ever used with nouns." And the answer is yes. 風, for example, is by itself a complete word with the kunyomi reading of "kaze;" "wind."

Are Onyomi actually used as words or only as parts of words?

Yes.

You actually used a kanji with an onyomi reading when it's used on its own as a noun: 食 is shoku, "meal."

What I mean by this is, is it possible to say a sentence with only Kunyomi words, and then say the exact same thing with only Onyomi words?

Possibly, although if it were easy/reliable enough to do I'm sure there would be a game made out of it.

Is it sort of like how we have Latin, Greek, French, and German roots, suffixes, and prefixes? "In" is from Latin(I'm 99% sure...) but doesn't have any meaning on its own but becomes part of words like incredible, or infamous, or how words may be changed or have things added to change their meanings, for example did, does, do all have the same root but are changes, or will, would, were, and won't where they are all changed but are all a different form of the same word and where won't is even changed to where it has a part that otherwise wouldn't be a word "wo".

If you know the origin of Kanji, then you know that it was part of importing one language into another, not unlike what English did with Latin, Greek, French, and German. So in a way, yes.

However, each kanji does have a meaning on its own and can be used independent of their kunyomi or onyomi. For example, 硝子, which can be pronounced as shoushi, however it seems to be more commonly pronounced garasu, which is the Japanese phoneticization of the English word "glass" and so has nothing to do with how those characters sound. But those characters are used because that combination of kanji meant glass before they adopted the English pronunciation.

And it's somewhat acceptable to just go and substitute your own kanji for words that already have proper kanji. You'll see this happen frequently in song lyrics where, for whatever reason, the writer chose different characters to represent common words. Fortunately, such instances will be accompanied with either furigana or kumimoji, so you won't have to guess how to say it when reading.

Hope this helps.