Kanji　漢字

Like I said in the preface, there are easily more than 50,000 Kanji. Thankfully you only really need to learn the 2,136 Jouyou Kanji to read everyday Japanese. The Japanese you use in conversation, that you read in newspapers and online, and the Japanese that you’ll see around on the streets of Japan will usually use the Jouyou Kanji. However, knowing around 3k – 5k will allow you to read most Japanese books, games, and understand to a “fluent-like” level.

That being said, here’s a huge piece of advice that will save you a TON of time:

DO NOT STUDY KANJI, STUDY WORDS

This may seem like an odd piece of advice, but this kind of advice is starting to take root in the Japanese learning community. The main idea is this: Learning individual Kanji is a waste of time. While many Kanji on their own can be individual words, such as 雨, 砂, and 霧, most Kanji don’t have a well-used meaning on their own and usually make up part of other well-known words. The idea is to spend your time learning words in context to how they’re used as opposed to Kanji where you won’t really use them in context. You’ll intuitively pick up the meaning of those Kanji as you go.

To highlight this, let me show you how you can pick up the meaning of a Kanji just by learning some words.

Words that contain the kanji 速：

• 高速 — High speed
• 急速 — Rapid (progress)
• 加速 — Acceleration
• 速球 — Fastball (baseball)
• 速度 — Velocity, amount of speed

So, you can probably assume that the meaning of 速 is something like speed, high speed, or quick. So when you see a word containing this Kanji, you can reasonably assume that the word gives that vibe.

How are Kanji constructed?

There are generally known to be 4 types of Kanji. Each type determines how the Kanji are constructed and gives insights to meaning and pronunciation.

Pictographs (象形文字): Pictographs make up around <4% of all Kanji, and are descriptive pictures of what’s being represented.

Indicators (指示文字): Kanji that represent ideas as pictures. These make up around 1% of all Kanji

Combographs (会意文字): Kanji that represent an idea by combining two Kanjis’ meanings together. These make up around 5% – 6% of all Kanji

Meaning and Sound (形声文字): These are the rest of all Kanji, around 90%. These Kanji are made up of two components, the Meaning portion which denotes the category of meaning that the Kanji gives, and the Sound portion which tells the reader how that Kanji should be pronounced.

Parts of the Kanji

Kanji are made up of smaller components called Bushu (部首), or Radicals, which give meaning hints, pronunciation hints, and are the basic unit or building blocks of all Kanji. There are a few hundred Bushu, which you can find the list of here: https://kanjialive.com/214-traditional-kanji-radicals/

It’s not important to learn each radical and what it means, but the most important ones can give you insight on the meaning of a Kanji, for example:

洗う which means “to wash” can be broken down into two parts, the three lines on the left resemble a river of flowing water, and thus is known as the “water radical”, and the primary part on the left is the Kanji 先, which has a number of meanings, but the one we are looking for here is “previous, former”. So we can imagine that when we are using water to return something to its previous state, we are washing it.

So… how do I study these?

That’s a great question, and the best way I can describe it is Don’t intentionally study Kanji, since the meaning of them will come to you as you learn the language and read more. I know, it’s not a super helpful piece of advice since when you come upon a new word with Kanji you don’t recognize, you have little to no chance to accurately say it correctly or even know what it means, but you will in time as you progress and learn.

So, how will I actually learn these Kanji then?

When you are starting out and progressing in your learning, even into the advanced stages, there’s no harm in using a dictionary to look up the meaning of a word so you know what it means in English. But think of the way you learned English as a child. When you encountered a new word that you’ve never seen before that you can’t really grasp the meaning of, you probably did one of the following:

• Asked somebody who understood the word (parent, friend, teacher, etc.) and asked them to explain it.
• Skipped over the word and continued reading, or
• You attempted to learn the meaning by following the context of the sentence, picking up on the clues to make an educated guess as to what the word is supposed to mean.

As for pronouncing the Kanji correctly, we need to understand that unfortunately, Japanese reading relies a lot on ✨Vibes✨. As you learn more Kanji, and you learn the reading of them intuitively, you will be able to use your ✨Vibes✨ to guess at how a new word is pronounced. Then likely have your friend correct you and tell you that the Kanji you were looking at uses a different reading, and you try to remember that for later.

For now, just use a Dictionary, Link to my resources page Here for the dictionaries I use.

How to write Kanji

Okay this section is kind of important, especially for when you’re trying to look up the meaning of a word or Kanji without spending 20 minutes doing so. We should learn Stroke Order.

I’ll make this short and probably write a full article later on, but stroke order is quite important for writing a Kanji correctly, legibly, and most importantly so that a recognition software can understand what you’re trying to write. There are a few basic rules to keep in mind:
Top to bottom, left to right
Horizontal strokes before vertical strokes
Draw out whole radicals before moving on to new ones

Now, there are exceptions to these rules, and the best way I found that you learn stroke order is simply by looking at dictionaries or online resources that show the stroke order of a Kanji and break it down to each Bushu. Learn the stroke order of the Bushu over the whole Kanji.

Okay, blah blah blah information overload. Show me some Kanji to memorize already!

Alright, we’ll start by learning some of the most basic Kanji that describe things, numbers, and basic concepts. Some of the easiest Kanji to understand that will build the foundation to your Kanji learning later using the knowledge we learned above

Yeah, that should be good enough for now. These Kanji don’t exactly make a lot of sense out of context however. You can read that 子 means “child” but without the right context, you’d never know how to use it properly. Looking at a young human child and calling them “子” just doesn’t work like it does in English, so while it’s nice to know the meanings and pronunciations of these Kanji, what is far more effective is seeing how they are used in real sentences.

So, in the next section, we are going to explore the basic Japanese sentence, with plenty of new vocabulary and examples where you can ACTUALLY start learning.

Everything up until now has been the preamble, an introduction to get you in the spirit of being able to learn Japanese, now is when the real fun starts.

But first, give yourself a pat on the back! If you’ve only ever known English your whole life and now you can pick up on the numerous over 200 various kana and some Kanji, that’s far ahead of all the alphabetic symbols you’ve known you whole life, and it plays a huge part in being able to understand something new. It’s an achievement to be proud of, even if you haven’t mastered reading or recognizing them yet. If you are still really rusty on your kana, I would recommend taking some time to review and get comfortable recognizing kana before continuing.