About Kanjis

[Nekomancer0158144]

みなーさん こんいちわ
I've been wondering about kanjis
For example
木
Kun:き,こー
On:ボク,モク

One of the meanings is
Tree,wood,timber
木
き

Another one is
Thursday
もくよう
木曜
I havent started to learn kanjis yet, but maybe soon
So my question is
do i have to learn the kanjis one by one with the diferent meanings and ways to say it?
for example i need to lear the kun and onyomi?
and if so when do i have to know where to use the kanji if its komu or ki
Or do you guys know becacause of the sentence?

[Javizy]

It's best to think of them like a massive alphabet. You learn how to write the letters and what their names are, and then you learn how to read them within words. So you learn 木 as 'tree' and remember how to write it, and then you learn 木々(きぎ), 木曜(もくよう), 木陰(こかげ) etc as words. If you learn き, ぎ, もく and こ as isolated readings, what do you do with them except waste a lot of effort and confuse yourself? Simply learning how to read words ensures you don't have to worry about which reading to use; you just have to remember the word! Learning words is obviously one of the biggest tasks in becoming fluent, and you can do it 一石二鳥 style with this approach. There are also many cases where you don't need to know the kanji, but just how to read it, and simply learning the word it's in is good enough, e.g. 蹂躙, 躊躇, 癇癪, 顰蹙 etc. This is a good forum for kanji stuff: http://forum.koohii.com/index.php Heisig's book, Remembering the Kanji, is a great way to take care of the 木 'tree' part, and then you can use flashcards to quickly learn words. I recommend Anki: http://ankisrs.net/

[Nekomancer0158144]

Oki!,thanks for the help
Btw how much do you know about kanjis.. and..
can you really read this?? 蹂躙, 躊躇, 癇癪, 顰蹙 XD
is extremely hard at the first time... i mean i can barely see black squares..
PD. so
depending of the word....
for example a word with -kun(jap) or On(china)
Car 車　くるま kuruma
Train　電車　でんしゃ　densah
Kuruma is the kun yomi
and sha is the onyomi... so to make it shot
Kuruma is a japanese word
and Densha is a Chinese word?
lol...sorry for making a big deal

[Kat]

Nekomancer0158144,

Hi there! Of course Javizy will have his own answer, but I find context helps so much with reading kanji. Those kanji you listed are indeed really difficult ones, but if they're in the middle of a sentence you have a much better chance at being able to work out what they mean. As to readings, have you heard of the "radicals"? These are the "building blocks" that kanji are made up of. For example all four kanji in 蹂躙 and 躊躇 have the radical for "leg" 足 on the far left. These radicals will often help someone literate in Japanese to work out the pronunciation of a complex kanji compound.

Yes to your other question: 電車 is a so-called "kango", which means a "two-kanji word of Chinese origin" (pronounced with on-yomi). 車 is a so-called "yamato kotoba", which is a native Japanese word (pronounced with kun-yomi). Hope this helps!

[Javizy]

Oki!,thanks for the help
Btw how much do you know about kanjis.. and..
can you really read this?? 蹂躙, 躊躇, 癇癪, 顰蹙 XD
is extremely hard at the first time... i mean i can barely see black squares..

I can write the ones in Heisig's book (2042) and the new 常用票 (じょうようひょう) additions, which add on another 150 or so, plus a few others I've picked up here and there. Like I said, you can learn to read quite easily by learning vocabulary, so I can read something like 500 or more that I can't write. In all honesty, I probably wouldn't recognise 顰 and 蹙 separately, but together I know 顰蹙, and in the common phrase 顰蹙を買う, it's very easy to recognise. Like Kat said, context is very helpful in general when reading, and not all rare characters are so messy, e.g. 沃 in 沃素 (iodine). Messy jouyou characters are incredibly rare, so don't worry about the examples I gave you for now. I was just trying to show you that you can even learn to read mess like that without much effort.

Do you need to know that many? I don't think it's necessary to write so many. Many Japanese people can't write 2000 characters. As for reading, 2000 will get you very far (newspapers, novels etc) and 3000 will allow you to read 99% of Wikipedia. If you get this far, your extra 500 characters will probably be different to mine, because it really depends on what you read. There are about 6000 total in use, but many of them are used in names and for obscure things like insects, plants, fish etc. Just aim to learn the jouyou characters that kids learn in school, and you'll pick up any extra ones you need as you meet them.

Kat makes a good point about radicals too, and it shows you that kanji aren't as scary as they look. 憩 looks a bit tricky, but before you learn it, you should know the more common characters 舌, 自 and 心 that comprise it. 顰 is actually made of the common characters 歩 (止, 少), 頁 and 卑 if you look closely. A good book (like Heisig's RTK) will teach you kanji in an order that facilitates learning in this way and makes them easier to remember.

[szink7807]

I'm no kanji expert, not by a long shot, but I've found that what works best for me is to first focus heavily on learning vocabulary before you delve into kanji. Then, when you do learn the kanji, like Javizy said, it's best to learn them in the context of words, and not individual readings, and not focus too heavily on the kun or on-yomi. For instance, I know that 電車 is でんしゃ (train). I know it by glancing at it, I don't take the time to say 電is read "でん" and 車 is read "しゃ". In this way, I tend to dissociate the characters from their readings, or stand-alone meanings and just focus on them as WORDS or parts of words. Many words, like densha, have multiple characters. Focus on the overall shapes of the words and you will come to know them on sight, without evaluating every stroke, same as you can glance at a word like "interdependence" and instantaneously read it by it's shape without concerning yourself with the individual letters.

Again, this is just what works for me. My only real aim is to be able to read a newspaper without having to look anything up. It's nice when I find I can write a word from memory, but I have no problem using hiragana to get my meaning across if I can't remember how to write the kanji. I don't dislike kanji, but I'm not crazy about them. Some people are in love with kanji, though, and want to know every stroke of every radical of every character of every word that ever existed. That's fine too, kanji are beautiful, and in reality, they could be a subject of study by themselves. Intricate writing systems are somewhat of a dying art. But if you're really more interested in practicality, that's what I recommend. Happy studying