Kanji and Hiragana in the Same Word

[schwing]

This is something that confuses me when trying to read hiragana: a word starts with a kanji character and then finishes with hiragana. For example, I'm reading "Japanese Verbs, Saying What You Mean" by Tim Matheson, and I came across 'tabemashou' which is written out like:

#べましょう。 where the '#' sign is a kanji character.

It's obvious that the sound of the kanji character is 'ta' but why use a kanji character when you could've used た ?

Please, someone help me understand.

-ken

[JockZon]

The kanji represents the stem and the hiragana is the tense of the verb.

行く
食べる

食べましょう
行きましょう

食べます
行きます

食べません
行きません

I hope tou understand.

[Satsujin]

As jockzon explained the hiragana at the end of the verb in Japanese is needed in order to properly conjugate that verb. For example:

nomu - 飲む

the "no" or の is the stem and never changes whether you are talking in the past tense or potential or "te" form of the verb or whether it's transative or intransitive.

However, while the hiragana is needed it is confusing in many cases where compounds are formed. In some cases the hiragana is added to the verb stem and in others it isn't. For instance "kaimono" meaning shopping comes from two kanji "kau - 買う" to shop and "mono - 物" a thing. BUT "kai" of "kaimono" can be written with both the hiragana and kanji or just the kanji and in both cases the pronuciation is the same.

買い物, 買物 【かいもの】

Anyway, don't think about it too much or your head will start to hurt. For now just realize that the hiragana is needed in combination with the Kanji to conjugate verbs. For this reason even with Kanji Japanese can not be written without hiragana and even though you could write everything in hiragana due to the fact nobody uses spaces when writing Japanese and the number of homophones the kanji actually makes things much easier to read and understand once you learn them.

[schwing]

Thanks for the replies. I think I understand what is happening, but it's not making it any easier to learn to read. I even notice that mosts of the posts on this forum are written like this.

How do you read a sentence when they are mixed like this? Is there a subset of kanji that I need to learn that is specific to verbs? I have a hiragana chart that I am learning off of now, are there kanji that correspond with the hiragana sounds?

Help! before my head explodes.

-ken

[JockZon]

A kanji could have different sounds depending on the word. You should learn both sounds and when you learn a word you should learn the kanji.

The kanji for eat - 食 - can be read as ショク, ジキ, く(う), く(らう), た(べる), は(む), ぐい depending on the word the kanji is used in.

[Brody]

It's obvious that the sound of the kanji character is 'ta' but why use a kanji character when you could've used た ?

Yeah, it's way confusing. Techinically, you wouldn't need to use kanji. But, it's just how the language is written. As I understand it, when the Japanese borrowed kanji for their writing. They took kanji for their sounds. Thus, if the ancient Japanese word for eat was 'taberu', they had no way to write that yet, so they got a kanji that had the 'ta' sound. Since the ta always stays constant in the word no matter how you conjugate it, they assigned a kanji to it. But since you have to change the 'ru' sound a lot in order to conjugate, it would be kind of hard to have many specific complex kanji for each conjugation of る. Thus they used simplified kanji (i.e. hiragana) that were easy to write for conjugation. This doesn't really explain why べ is written in hiragana. My guess is that since べ is "outside" the kanji, it helps denote that the verb is Class 2 and helps you figure out how to conjugate it (as opposed to a word like 帰る, which, though it sounds like a class 2 verb, we know is a class 1 verb because the え hiragana is "inside" the kanji).

Also, kanji ultimately do make reading A LOT easier. With no spaces and little puncuation in writing, it helps you separate words. When hiragana is used for conjugation, you get familiar with what is possible, so you know the hiragana is probably conjugation when right after kanji. It is very hard to read when it is pure hiragana.

'Course, this doesn't help that words are still sometimes completely written in hiragana. I have talked to Japanese friends who don't like to overuse kanji because it looks too Chinese. Thus, you'll see most onomatopoiea (spelling?) words written only in hiragana, because, I guess, they are "pure" Japanese. Also, they seem to throw in words written in hiragana even when there are kanji available.

Just think of this like English spelling. English spelling is ridiculous. It would be so much easier if it were phonetic. Yet, it is the way we do things and it does make things easier, in a way.

Don't worry about this too much. It will all fall into place.

Good luck.

[Bueller_007]

Thanks for the replies. I think I understand what is happening, but it's not making it any easier to learn to read. I even notice that mosts of the posts on this forum are written like this.

How do you read a sentence when they are mixed like this? Is there a subset of kanji that I need to learn that is specific to verbs? I have a hiragana chart that I am learning off of now, are there kanji that correspond with the hiragana sounds?

Help! before my head explodes.

-ken

There's a good thread somewhere on the forum about learning kanji readings (on-yomi vs kun-yomi) that I suggest you look for.

[Bucko]

With Japanese verbs, think of the kanji as the "feeling" of the verb, then the hiragana as the logical placement of the verb.

E.g. When you see, for example, 食べる, the 「食」 should make you "feel" the concept of 'food' or 'eat', and the 「べる」 gives it a literal position (i.e. present/future tense).

It is for this reason that learning kanji actually makes remembering vocab a lot easier. When I can't remember a word I simply try and "feel" the kanji in my mind, and the rest of the word usually comes. Likewise, if I can't remember the kanji, but I know the hiragana, I try and "feel" the meaning of the word, and the mnemonic for writing the kanji usually comes to me.