Japanese Writing Characters

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Okay, so now we understand that you are going to know at least 1,945 basic kanji in order to read a book or a newspaper. The good news is that even though each kanji is different, all kanji are made of "parts" called radicals. There are only 214 radicals. Each kanji merely has a different combination of those parts. You will also find that many similar looking kanji have the same reading and sometimes similar mearnings. When you break it down like this learning 1,945 kanji becomes manageable.

The picture to the right is a radical which represents the concept of fire. Below I have made a list of other kanji that use this radical for fire.

灯 This kanji means "light" and is often used in the word 灯火, pronounced "tomoshibi".

炊 This word means "to cook", usually used in reference to cooking rice. When not used with other kanji, this word is used as a verb and is written as 炊く, pronounced "taku".

焼 This word means "to grill, to roast or barbecue". When used in verb form it is written as 焼く, pronounced "yaku".

煙 This word means "smoke" and is pronounced "kemuri".

燃 This word means "to burn" and is used in with another kanji to make up the word 燃料 which means "fuel" and is pronounced "nenryou".

爆 This word means "to burst open" and is used with another kanji to make up the word 爆発 which means "explosion" and is pronounced "bakuhatsu".

Altogether, you can find this radical in 10 different kanji. So you can see, just from this one simple radical we can make several kanji. Sometimes that one kanji alone has a meaning, or we can always combine that kanji with another kanji to make another word. When you think about the combinations you can make with all the kanji the possibilities of words you can make become nearly infinite!

I often find that with long drawn out explanations I get lost and confused. My brain always works best when you explain it to me like I'm 5 years old. So that's what I'm going to do. Here is the law of kanji:

• A radical is the main part of a kanji which represents a concept such as fire, water, moon, tree, etc.
• There are 214 radicals. A kanji is made from a radical. A radical plus other added parts makes a kanji.
• There are 1,945 standard kanji in the Japanese language.
• One kanji usually represents a verb or a simple concept.Two kanji combined together express more advanced concepts

Each kanji symbol has multiple readings depending on the word that it fits into. At the very least, a single kanji will have two

different readings. We classify these two different ways to read a kanji as:

1. KUN (pronounced "coon")
2. ON (pronounced "own")

The word "yomi" in Japanese means "reading". So, Japanese people refer to these terms as kun-yomi and on-yomi.

Definition

on-yomi: This is the Chinese reading of the word morphed into Japanese
kun-yomi: This is an entirely original Japanese word fitted to it's Chinese kanji which has the same meaning

even more simple definition:

on-yomi: Reading derived from Chinese
kun-yomi: Reading derived from Japanese

Example:

1.
One of the most common kanji in Japanese is 行

2.
on-yomi: kō (行) meaning "do"
kun-yomi: i (行) meaning "go"

3.
on-yomi are used only when two kanji are put together to make a word.
kun-yomi stand alone and always have hiragana attached to them

4.
In reading Japanese text you will never see the kanji 行 standing alone. But you as soon as you see hiragana written after it you will automatically know to use the kun-yomi: i
examples:
行きます: ikimasu: I am going
行けない: ikenai: I can't go
行きたくない: ikitakunai: I don't want to go

When you see 行 attached to another kanji you will automatcially know to use the on-yomi: kō
行動：kōdō: behavior
運行: unkō: movement
行楽地：kōrakuchi: tourist spot

Simplified Summary

on-yomi: Chinese reading, used when attached to other kanji
ku-yomi: Japanese reading, stands alone followed by hiragana

In the previous section I talked about hiragana and gave some examples of kanji that are followed by hiragana. Well, if you're wondering what hiragana is, I will explain it here briefly.

Japanese uses 3 basic writing systems:

1. The basic "alphabet" of Japanese is what is called hiragana. There are 46 hiragana symbols that you will have to memorize in order to start reading Japanese. Yes! You really can read Japanese after you have mastered hiragana. If you're able to get your hands on some Japanese children's books, you'll find that the books are written in big hiragana letters that are easy to read and understand, Some of these books use kanji, but you will be able to read the kanji because above the kanji will be hiragana symbols which tell you how to pronounce the kanji. These little hiragana symbols above the kanji are called furigana.

2. Next is katakana. There are 46 katakana symbols as well, and I'm afrad that you will have to memorize those as well if you want to start reading Japanese. Katakana are mostly used to write words that have been adopted into Japanese from from other foreign languages.

3. Once you have mastered hiragana and katakana, the next logical step is to start mastering kanji. Kanji are individual little "pictures" that represent objects and concepts. The Japanese kanji come from the writing characters of China.

In reading Japanese text you will also sometimes see characters from the Roman alphabet (English). Romanized numbers are also frequently used just about as much as Japanese numbers represented by kanji.

Since getting a tattoo is a serious decision there are a couple of points I would like to mention if you are considering getting a kanji tattoo on your body.

1. Don't get a kanji tatoo from someone who hasn't studied Japanese or Chinese outside of the realms of tattooing. A general tattoo artist will not know the stroke order of the kanji, which if not done correctly, will definitely make your kanji tattoo look like a fake. Get your kanji tattoo from someone who grew up using Chinese or Japanese.

2. Meaning: Again, a general tattoo artist is not going to be able to choose the best kanji combination for the meaning you want to convey. There are kanji for some words like love, bravery, intelligence, etc that can be expressed with one simple kanji, but each "idea" such as love, bravery or intelligence can be embellished or have a different shade of meaning if it combined with another kanji. You should explore your options with a native speaker so as to make sure you get the exact meaning that you want.

Summary: Getting a bad kanji tattoo of, let's say, the word "intelligence", is like walking around with the tattoo "speling guinness" on your back when what you wanted to say was "spelling genius". Feel free to contact me so that I can do some in depth research with native speakers into the meaning you want to purvey on your tattoo.