Kanji

Kanji (漢字, literally "characters from Han Dynasty China"; see also Han Chinese) are Chinese characters used in Japanese language. Kanji are one of the five character sets used in the modern Japanese writing system, the other four being hiragana, katakana, the Roman alphabet (romaji), and Arabic numerals. This article focuses on the Japanese use of these characters; see Chinese character for a general discussion of Chinese characters, which are also used in several other languages. == History == There is some disagreement about how the use of Chinese characters began in Japan, but it is generally accepted that Buddhism monks brought Chinese texts back to Japan in about the 5th century. These texts were in the Chinese language and would have been read as such at first. Over time, however, a system known as ''kanbun'' (漢文) emerged; it essentially used Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read it in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time. Eventually a writing system called ''manyogana'' (used in the ancient poetry anthology ''Manyoshu'') evolved that used a limited set of Chinese characters for their phonetics value alone, not for their semantics value, which was much more convenient for writing Japanese poetry. Manyogana written in curvilinear style became ''hiragana'', a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana. ''Katakana'' emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified ''manyogana'' to a single constituent element. Hiragana and katakana are referred to collectively as ''kana''. In modern Japanese, kanji is used to write certain parts of the language, such as noun, adjective word stem and verb word stem, while ''hiragana'' is used to write inflection verb and adjective endings (''okurigana''), grammatical particle, and words where the kanji is too difficult to read or remember. Conversely, katakana is used for representing onomatopoeia and non-Chinese loanword. Note, however, that the usage of katakana to write loan words developed at a late stage. Originally they were written using kanji, chosen either for their meaning (煙草 or 莨 ''tobacco'') or to spell the word ateji (天婦羅 or 天麩羅 ''tempura''). == Types of kanji: categorized by history == === Kokuji === While some kanji and Chinese hanzi are mutually readable, many more are not. In addition to characters that have different meanings in Japanese, and characters that have identical meanings but are written differently, there are also characters peculiar to Japanese known as ''kokuji'' (国字; literally "national characters"). ''Kokuji'' are also known as ''wasei kanji'' (和製漢字; lit. "Chinese characters made in Japan"). There are hundreds of ''kokuji'' (see the [http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/afaq-full.html#kokuji sci.lang.japan AFAQ list]), and although some are rarely used, many others have become important additions to the written Japanese language. These include: * 峠 ''tōge'' (mountain pass) * 榊 ''sakaki'' (''sakaki'' tree, genus ''Camellia'') * 畑 ''hatake'' (field of crops) * 辻 ''tsuji'' (crossroads, street) * 働 ''dō'', ''hatara(ku)'' (work) === Kokkun === In addition to ''kokuji'', there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These kanji are not considered ''kokuji'' but are instead called ''kokkun'' (国訓) and include characters such as: * 沖 ''oki'' (offing, offshore; Ch. ''chōng'' rinse) * 森 ''mori'' (forest; Ch. ''sēn'' gloomy, majestic, luxuriant growth) * 椿 ''tsubaki'' (''Camellia japonicus''; Ch. ''chūn'' ''Ailantus'') === Old characters and new characters === The same kanji character can sometimes be written in two different ways, 旧字体 (''kyujitai''; lit. "old character") and 新字体 (''shinjitai''; "new character"). The following are some examples of ''kyū-jitai'' followed by the corresponding ''shin-jitai'': * 國国 ''kuni'' (country) * 號号 ''gō'' (number) * 變変 ''hen'', ''ka(waru)'' (change) ''Kyū-jitai'' were used before the end of World War II, but Occupied Japan the government introduced the simplified ''shin-jitai''. Some of the new characters are similar to Simplified Chinese character used in the People's Republic of China. There are also Chinese characters that are only used phonetically in Japanese (当て字 ''ateji''), and many Chinese characters that are not used in Japanese at all. Theoretically, however, any Chinese character can also be a Japanese character—the ''Morohashi Daikanwa Jiten'', the largest dictionary of kanji ever compiled, has close to 50,000 entries, even though some of those entries have never been used in Japanese. == Readings == A kanji character may have several (in rare cases ten or more) possible pronunciations, depending on its context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and location in the sentence. These pronunciations, or ''readings'', are typically categorized as either ''on'yomi'' or ''kun'yomi'' (often abbreviated ''on'' and ''kun''). === ''On'yomi'' (Chinese reading) === The '''''on'yomi'' (音読み) of a kanji (also called its ''on'' reading or Chinese reading''') is based on the Japanese approximation of the original Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were reintroduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple ''on'yomi'' (and often multiple meanings as well). Contrariwise, ''wasei kanji'' typically have no ''on'yomi'' at all. For example, the kanji for ''light'' or ''next'' (明) may be pronounced ''myō'', from an early (c. 5th century–6th century century) borrowing from southern China, or ''mei'', from a later (c. 7th century–9th century century) borrowing from northern China. However, the kanji 込 is Japanese, not Chinese, in origin, and thus lacks any ''on'yomi''. Due to trade/navigation patterns, a great volume of Chinese vocabulary was introduced to Japan by natives of southern Chinese, thus many common pronunciations more closely mirror those of Southern Chinese languages ("dialects") rather than Northern pronunciations--of course it must be noted that Chinese languages have changed over time and pronunciations used at the time of introduction of vocabulary from China to Japan may no longer be used in a recognizable form by contemporary Chinese. ''On'yomi'' are phonologically characterized by their tendency toward single-syllable readings, since each character expressed a single Chinese syllable. However, Tonal language aside, most Chinese syllables (especially in Middle Chinese, in which final stop consonants were more prevalent than in most modern dialects) did not fit the largely-CV (consonant-vowel) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most ''on'yomi'' are composed of two moras (syllables or beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (this being ''i'' in the case of ''e'' and ''u'' in the case of ''o'', due to drift in the centuries since), or one of the syllables ''ku'', ''ki'', ''tsu'', ''chi'', or syllabic ''n'', chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. (In fact, palatalized consonants before vowels other than ''i'' (written as ''y'' in consonant clusters and the consonants ''ch'', ''sh'' and ''j'' in these environments), as well as syllabic ''n'', were likely added to the Japanese phonotactic system to better simulate Chinese; none of these features occur in words of native Japanese origin.) ''On'yomi'' primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words (熟語 ''jukugo''), many of which are the result of the adoption (along with the kanji themselves) of Chinese words for concepts that either didn't exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the English borrowings from Latin and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite, than their native counterparts. The major exception to this rule is surnames, in which the native ''kun'yomi'' reading is used (see below). === ''Kun'yomi'' (Japanese reading) === The '''''kun'yomi'' (訓読み) of a kanji (also called its ''kun'' reading, Japanese reading, or somewhat misleadingly its native reading''') is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or ''yamatokotoba'', that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. Again, there can be multiple ''kun'' readings for the same kanji, and some kanji have no ''kun'yomi'' at all. For instance, the kanji for east, 東, has the ''on'' reading ''tō''. However, Japanese already had two words for ''east'', ''higashi'' and ''azuma''. Thus, the kanji character 東 had the latter pronunciations grafted onto it as ''kun'yomi''. However, the kanji 寸, denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (slightly over an inch), had no native Japanese equivalent; thus it has only its ''on'yomi'', ''sun''. ''Kun'yomi'' are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure common to ''yamatokotoba'', passingly similar to that of the nearby Polynesian languages. Most noun or adjective ''kun'yomi'' are two to three syllables long, while verb ''kun'yomi'' are more often one or two syllables in length (not counting trailing hiragana called ''okurigana'', although those are usually considered part of the reading). In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji have slightly different meanings. For instance, the word なおす; ''naosu'', when written 治す;, means to heal an illness or sickness. When written 直す;, it means to fix something (e.g. a bicycle or TV). Sometimes the differences are very clear, other times they are quite subtle. Sometimes you will get differences of opinion depending on which reference work you look at -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use between them. Because of this confusion, even Japanese people have trouble knowing which kanji to use in some cases. One workaround is simply to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと ''moto'' (which has at least 4 different kanji, 3 of which have only very subtle differences). === Other readings === Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called ''nanori'', which are mostly used for people's names (often given names), and are generally closely related to the ''kun'yomi''. Place names sometimes also use ''nanori'' (or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere). ''Gikun'' (義訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual ''on'yomi'' or ''kun'yomi'', but are instead connected by the meaning of the written and spoken phrases. For example, the compound 一寸 might naïvely be read ''issun'', meaning "one ''sun''", but it is more often used to write the indivisible word ''chotto'', "a little". ''Gikun'' also feature in some Japanese family names. Many ''ateji'' (kanji used only for their phonetic value) have meanings derived from their usage: for example, the now-archaic 亜細亜 ''ajia'' was formerly used to write "Asia" in kanji; the character 亜 now means ''Asia'' in such compounds as 東亜 ''tōa'', "East Asia". From the written 亜米利加 ''amerika'', the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage 米国 ''beikoku'', lit. "rice country" but meaning "United States of America". === When to use which reading === The division between ''on'yomi'' and ''kun'yomi'' can seem arbitrary and unnecessarily difficult to the learner of Japanese. Words for similar concepts, such as "east" (東), "north" (北) and "northeast" (東北), can have completely different pronunciations: the ''kun'' readings ''higashi'' and ''kita'' are used for the first two, while the ''on'' reading ''tōhoku'' is used for the third. However, the situation is actually no less coherent than the similar mixture of pronunciations in English language which resulted from similar borrowings from other languages. To complicate the matter, there are two basic guidelines for determining the pronunciation of a particular kanji in a given context. First, and most simply, kanji occurring in compounds are almost always read using ''on'yomi''. These sorts of words are sometimes called ''jukugo'' (熟語). For example, 情報 ''jōhō'' "information", 半月 ''hangetsu'' "half-moon", and 革命家 ''kakumeika'' "[a] revolutionary" all follow this pattern. Secondly, kanji occurring in isolation -- that is, written adjacent only to kana, not to other kanji -- are typically read using their ''kun'yomi''. Together with their okurigana, if any, they generally function either as a noun or as an inflected adjective or verb: e.g. 月 ''tsuki'' "moon", 情け ''nasake'' "sympathy", 赤い ''akai'' "red", 建てる ''tateru'' "to build". The rare kanji compounds that also have okurigana, such as 空揚げ ''karaage'' "fried" and 名無し ''nanashi'' "nameless", also fall into this category. There are numerous exceptions to both rules. 赤金 ''akagane'' "copper", 日傘 ''higasa'' "parasol", and the famous 神風 ''kamikaze'' "divine wind" all use ''kun'yomi'' despite being simple kanji compounds. Fortunately, most exceptions to the second rule are simple nouns: 愛 ''ai'' "love", 禅 ''Zen'', 点 ''ten'' "mark, dot" -- in addition, the vast majority of these cases involve kanji that have no ''kun'yomi'', so there can be no confusion. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one ''on'yomi'': witness 説明 ''setsumei'' "explanation" versus 灯明 ''tōmyō'' "light offered to a god". There are even kanji compounds that use a mixture of ''on'yomi'' and ''kun'yomi'', known as ''jūbako'' (重箱) or ''yutō'' (湯桶) words. The words ''jūbako'' and ''yutō'' themselves are examples: the first character of ''jūbako'' is read using ''on'yomi'', the second ''kun'yomi'', while it is the other way around with ''yutō''. Other examples include 金色 ''kin'iro'' "golden" (''on-kun'') and 影法師 ''kagebōshi'' "silhouette" (''kun-on-on''). Finally, there are some words that can be read multiple ways -- in some cases the words have different meanings depending on how it is read. One example is 上手, which can be read in three different ways -- ''jōzu'' (skilled), ''uwate'' (upper part), or ''kamite'' (upper part). In addition, 上手い has the reading ''umai'' (skilled). Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo (東京 ''Tōkyō'') and Japan itself (日本 ''Nihon'' or sometimes ''Nippon'') are read with ''on'yomi''; however, by far the vast majority of Japanese place names are read with ''kun'yomi'' (e.g. 大阪 ''Ōsaka'', 青森 ''Aomori'', 箱根 ''Hakone''). Family names are also usually read with ''kun'yomi'' (e.g., 山田 ''Yamada'', 田中 ''Tanaka'', 鈴木 ''Suzuki''). Personal names, although they are not typically considered ''jūbako''/''yutō'', often contain mixtures of ''kun'yomi'', ''on'yomi'', and ''nanori'', and are generally only readable with some experience (e.g., 大助 ''Daisuke'' [''on-kun''], 夏美 ''Natsumi'' [''kun-on'']). === Pronunciation assistance === Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji will often have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as ''furigana'' (small ''kana'' written above or to the right of the character) or ''kumimoji'' (small ''kana'' written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners and ''manga'' (comics). It is also used in newspapers for rare or unusual readings and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji (see below). == Types of Kanji: by prevalence (Orthographic reform and kanji lists) == In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a series of orthography reforms. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called 新字体 (''shinjitai''). The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used. Kanji lists include: === Education kanji (''kyoiku kanji'' 教育漢字): 1,006 characters === Characters that Japanese children are required to learn in elementary school (881 prior to 1981). The specific grade-level breakdown of the Education kanji is known as the Gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō 学年別漢字配当表), or the "Gakush� Kanji". === Daily-use kanji (''joyo kanji'' 常用漢字): 1,945 characters === These consist of all the kyōiku kanji, plus an additional 939 more difficult kanji taught in secondary school. These are taught during Elementary_school and junior high school in Japan. In publishing for the general public, characters outside this category are often given ''Ruby characters''. The jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981, and they replaced an older list of 1850 characters known as the General-use kanji (''toyo kanji'' 当用漢字). The tōyō kanji list was introduced in 1946. === Name kanji (''jinmeiyo kanji'' 人名用漢字): 2,928 characters === These consist of the Daily-use kanji, plus an additional 983 kanji that are no longer used for words, but are still found in people's names. Over the years, the Minister of Justice has on several occasions added to this list, based upon requests from parents. Sometimes the phrase jinmeiyo kanji refers to all 2928, and sometimes it only refers to the 983 that are only used for names. === Japanese Industrial Standard Kanji=== These standards define the character code-points for use with computers and information interchange. The Japanese Industrial Standard standards have been through numerous revisions. The current standards are: *[http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanji90 JIS X 0208:1997],which is the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji. * [http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanjisup JIS X 0212:1990], which was a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard was rarely used, mainly because the common Shift_JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete; * [http://www.io.com/~kazushi/encoding/jis.html#kanji00 JIS X 0213:2000], a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,625 additional kanji, of which 2,741 were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift_JIS encoding; * JIS X 0221:1995, which is the Japanese version of the original ISO 10646/Unicode standard. === Gaiji: Up to 80,000 characters === ''Gaiji'' (外字), also known as "external characters", are rare kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese language Character encoding. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as well. ''Gaiji'' can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters. Both are a problem for information interchange, as the code-point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer to another (in the former case) or from one operating system to another (in the latter). ''Gaiji'' were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997, while JIS X 0213-2000 actually used the range of code-points previously allocated to ''gaiji'', making them completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT DoCoMo's "iMode" service, where they are used for pictorial characters. Unicode allows for optional encoding of ''gaiji'' in Private Use Area. (The upper limit of possible characters is disputed. The highest estimates have been 80,000 by 19th century European scholars, but the consensus has been closer to 40,000. Because of standards that have been enforced since World War II, the issue of Gaiji are mostly associated with older texts.) == Types of Kanji: by Category == ''See also: Chinese character classification'' Since the 2nd century CE, Chinese characters have been classified into six categories (六書: ''rikusho''). The classification is open to interpretational differences, and some characters can legitimately be regarded as belonging to more than one category. * 象形文字 (''shōkeimoji'') These are often called "pictographs" in English (象形 is also the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs). The characters are rough sketches of the object they represent. 目 is an eye tipped on its side, 木 is tree, etc. Some are so stylized they are not often really recognizable. * 指事文字 (''shijimoji'') These are called "logograms", "simple ideographs" and sometimes just "symbols" in English. They are usually simple and represent an abstract concept such as a number or direction: 一: 1, 二: 2, 三: 3, 上: up/above, 下: down/below, etc. * 会意文字 (''kaiimoji'') Often called "compound ideographs", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs which combine to present an overall meaning. An example is 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down). Another is 休 (rest) from 人 (person) and 木 (tree). * 形声文字 (''keiseimoji'') These are "semasio-phonetic" or "phonetic-ideographic" characters in English. They are by far the largest category, making up about 85% of characters. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which indicates the meaning or semantic context, and the other the pronunciation. (The pronunciation really relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese ON reading of the kanji.) As examples of this, consider the kanji with the 言 shape: 語, 記, 訳, 説, etc. All are related to word/language/meaning. Similarly kanji with the 雨 (rain) shape (雲, 電, 雷, 雪, 霜, etc.) are almost invariably related to weather. Kanji with the 寺 (temple) shape on the right (詩, 持, 時, 侍, etc.) usually have an ON reading of SHI or JI. Sometimes one can guess the meaning and/or reading simply from the components. * 転注文字 (''tenchūmoji'') This group are sometimes called "derivative characters", and is rather vaguely defined. It refers to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, 楽 (music, comfort, ease) is thought by some to have began as a picture of a drum, and by others to have represented bells on a plank of wood. * 仮借文字 (''kashamoji'') These are called "phonetic loan characters" and are used for cases where a word is spelled out phonetically. The writing of America as 亜米利加 (a-me-ri-ka) is an example of the use of this group of kanji. This phonetic usage even happened inside Chinese, where the 無 character was borrowed from an earlier form meaning "dance" to write a word pronounced the same way meaning "stop, cease to be". (For a table of all the 教育漢字 broken down by category see [http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjitypes.html this page], from which the above description has been extracted.) == Miscellaneous == The ideographic iteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example 色々 (''iroiro'' "various") and 時々 (''tokidoki'' "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the Japanese name Sasaki (佐々木). Another frequently used symbol is ヶ (a small katakana "ke"), pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as 六ヶ月, ''rokkagetsu'' "six months") or "ga" in place names like Kasumigaseki (霞ヶ関). The Japanese government provides the ''Kanji kentei'' (日本漢字能力検定試験 ''Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken''; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude") which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the ''Kanji kentei'' tests about 6000 kanji. == Related topics == * Kyoiku kanji * List of kanji by concept * List of kanji by group * List of kanji by stroke count * Chinese character * Mincho * Japanese Gothic typeface * Sino-Japanese * Han unification == References == * DeFrancis, John (1990). ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686. * Hannas, William. C. (1997). ''Asia's Orthographic Dilemma''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover). * Kaiser, Stephen (1991). Introduction to the Japanese Writing System. In ''Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide''. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-1553-4. * Mitamura, Joyce Yumi and Mitamura, Yasuko Kosaka (1997). ''Let's Learn Kanji''. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-2068-6. * Unger, J. Marshall (1996). ''Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines''. ISBN 0195101669 == External links == ===Dictionaries and other kanji lists=== *[http://www.j-talk.com/nihongo/search/kanjisearch.php Japanese Kanji Dictionary] Search for Kanji by stroke count, reading etc. *[http://homepage2.nifty.com/TAB01645 Dictionary of Kokuji] Japanese only *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html Jim Breen's WWWJDIC] Online Kanji and Japanese Dictionary *[http://www.kanjidict.com/ Kiki's Kanji Dictionary] *[http://www.kanji-a-day.com Kanji-a-day]: [http://www.kanji-a-day.com/level2/kanji2.xls Downloadable kanji list (xls) available] *[http://moji.mozdev.org Moji]: a kanji dictionary extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. *[http://www.manythings.org/kanji/q/ Kanji dictionary] *[http://www.kanji.de/KanjiQuickDownload.html KanjiQuick Kanji-English/German dictionary] with translation and TTS (Text To Speech) modules ===Translators=== *[http://www.j-talk.com/nihongo/ Japanese Kanji to Romaji Hiragana Converter & Translator] A site that translates Kanji into Kana with translation rollovers. *[http://www.rikai.com/perl/Home.pl Rikai.com] A web-mediator that adds kanji readings to Japanese web-pages *[http://world.altavista.com/tr Japanese -> English / English -> Japanese online translator.] Includes English -> Kanji / Kanji -> English. ===Other links=== * [http://www.sabotenweb.com/bookmarks/about/scott.html Scott Alprin, Teaching Kanji with components: using an element-based approach in class] * [http://www.kotoba-project.com/kanjiintro.html Kanji Word Families]: Study method based on thesis that kanji evolved from seven primordial concepts. * [http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/unger2_introduction.html#modern_japanese The Modern Japanese Writing System]: an excerpt from ''Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan'', by J. Marshall Unger * [http://www.nuthatch.com/kanjicards/500.html 500 Print-friendly Kanji Flash Cards] * [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=ceed31cd-15a9-4b86-afe5-e77a095599f3 Office XP IME] Required in order to use Japanese input method in Microsoft Office XP. * [http://www.kanji.de/ a learning software for learning kanji (available in English and German)] * [http://www.whiterabbitpress.us/ White Rabbit Press publishes a set of Japanese Kanji Flashcards specifically designed for the Japanese Languge Proficiency Test] Kanji Japanese language Japanese terms ms:Kanji vi:Kanji

Kanji

== Miscellaneous comments == The following passage was moved from the article: :Kanji were originally introduced into Japan from Korea during the period of close contact between the Yamato state and Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. I don't know what Sewing referred to, but it may be Suishu->Liechuan->Woguo: :敬佛法, 於百濟求得佛經, 始有文字. But the 6th century is too late. Wani (judging from the name, he would be a Lelang Chinese) is said to have brought the Analects and the Thousand-Character Classic during the reign of Emperor Ojin. However, neither Kojiki or Nihonshoki says that he introduced Chinese characters for the first time. You can find an interesting passage in Samguk Sagi->History of Baekje->King Geunchogo :古記云百濟開國已來未有以文字記事至是得博士高興始有書記然高興未嘗顯於他書不知其何許人也 This means that according to an old record, Baekje started to use characters to record facts at the same period as Wani came to Japan. I've introduced some stuffs to examine the date, but there is currently no accepted theory. Considering the close contact with the Lelang (and then Daifang) commandery, that would be earlier than Sewing thinks. --User:Nanshu 00:21, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC) ---- I have modified the history section and put it back in. Unless you have a new theory that Kanji came from Vietnam, you cannot possibly find fault with my new edit. --User:Sewing 12:38, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC) Hehe, you can put the sentence "There may exist ET and there may not exist ET." on the article. So, is it meaningful? One looks at a map and finds that the East China Sea lies between China and Japan. And he knows that Chinese characters originated in China. Then he guesses, "Chinese character should have crossed the sea." In fact, there remain various legends that say Chinese went across the East China Sea to Japan. Few minutes later, he looks at the map again and finds a peninsula between China and Japan. He thinks, "These characters may have run through the peninsula." Everyone can write that "informative" passage even if he/she doesn't know the history of Kanji at all! --User:Nanshu 22:37, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC) So all the books and Web sites that say Wani came from Korea are wrong? Wrong why? Because of your personal theories? I said "China or Korea" to make it acceptably NPOV to you. You would rather that Wikipedia users have no idea how Kanji got to Japan, I guess. I suppose the idea that Japan might have got ''something'' from Korea is so repulsive to you that you simply have to censor the thought! I pity you. --User:Sewing 23:17, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC) I fear you misunderstand me. I've never said that Wani did not came from Korea. I mean that he should be Chinese if he was real. As you know, the Chinese maintained colonies in the peninsula over 400 years, implaining Chinese cultures there. I think it would be they who introduced Chinese characters to Japan. Note that in this case, Chinese includes sinicized natives. But almost all Chinese have their roots in non-Chinese, and it is almost impossible to determine how long they had been "Chinese". --User:Nanshu 23:11, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC) ----- Moved from the article :Appropriately, the most common Kanji to be found in daily usage is 日, "sun", which gives rise to the name "land of the rising sun". What is the point of this? -- User:TakuyaMurata 00:23, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC) ---- 30,300 hits for "Kanzi", but this brings up unrelated hits, so... 709 hits for Kanzi and Japan 2,430 for Kanzi and Japanese This should be sufficient to allow it to be kept. User:WhisperToMe 03:25, 19 May 2004 (UTC) :As it is of slight importance, I've moved it towards the end of the paragraph. This does not imply that its existence is trivial, however. --User:Taoster 05:48, 19 May 2004 (UTC) I have never, ever seen kanji spelt ''kanzi''. This is one of those situations where there is a standard spelling in English that overrides any obscure system of romanization, besides which, adding all these alternative romanizations is really pointless. They are outdated and never used anymore; anyone who is aware of them would also know Hepburn, and for those who are not it's simply confusing, extraneous, redundant information. User:Exploding Boy 14:45, May 19, 2004 (UTC) _____ On what basis or discussion did you decide to move the article to Chinese character in Japan? The title makes no sense. I'm moving it back. User:Exploding Boy 04:04, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC) == Reason for development of hiragana? == The text of the article includes the sentence, "Only men learned these characters, which eventually led to the development of hiragana as a writing system for women." Is this historically correct? Or would it be more accurate to say, "Only men learned kanji; when the hiragana writing system was developed, women adopted the hiragana."? I'm not aware that the hiragana system was devised for women, but rather, for men, as a shorthand for complicated or often-used kanji. -- Anon : I learned that hiragana developed as a form of writing for women, who were generally not taught to read and write kanji. I believe that the entire ''Genji Monogatari'', whose author was a woman, was written in hiragana. User:Exploding Boy 13:23, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC) : Hiragana was a cursive outgrowth of manyogana. Manyogana were certain Chinese characters used simply as phonetic characters, with no meaning attached, to write poetry. Women were not taught kanji, but they did learn hiragana. Genji Monogatari was indeed written in hiragana, as was the Pillow Book (also by a woman). As an aside, there is a Chinese "women's writing" system, the name of which I can't recall, but would be excellent fodder for a wikipedia entry. User:Adamrice 18:03, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC) :: Oh yeah, it begins with an N I think... User:Exploding Boy 01:55, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC) ::: Nu Shu. --User:Menchi 02:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) That's the one :) User:Exploding Boy 02:16, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC) === True, women used hiragana, but... === I don't recall that the reason for development of hiragana was to give women a writing system. I'll put it on my to-do list to find out more... but not sure how soon it'll get done. ::Could people please sign their posts. This is getting very confusing. User:Exploding Boy 14:13, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC) == Kyū-jitai & Shin-jitai == Recently on Wiktionary, a new user has been adding terms like "simplified" and "traditional" to Japanese entries, which has confused those of us who know a little about about Japanese or Chinese. It turns out that Japanese has the terms 旧字体 (kyū-jitai) and 新字体 (shin-jitai) which are to some degree analogous to Chinese's 繁體字 / 繁体字 (f�ntǐz�) Traditional characters and 簡體字 / 简体字 (jiǎntǐz�) Simplified characters. I'd love to find out as much about this as I can but there's little information in English on the internet. — User:Hippietrail 09:45, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC) == Taku's edit == A couple of comments about my edit. Sadly, the article as of today seems not a good article at all. I found there are some overlap between this and other articles like onyomi and Japanese name. Also, the article has almost no mention about shin-jitai and the significant reform that was made in World War II. We also need to mention much more about graphical features of kanji as well. The fact is that kanji seems to look different from Chinese characters used in China. This is, by the way, an issue in unicode. Anyway, so I am doing some major edits. Any inputs are highly welcome as always. -- User:TakuyaMurata 10:00, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC) == hand to mouth? == Who's been putting in "hand to mouth" for toyo kanji? This is bizarre. As I understand it, there are 881 "essential characters" taught through grade 6, plus another 969 (1850 total) "general use" (toyo) kanji. User:Adamrice == Four-kanji compounds == I think the sentence beginning "''When kanji characters are not followed by hiragana''" should read: :"When kanji characters are not followed by hiragana they are often grouped in compounds of two or more characters which are pronounced in the ''on'' reading." Then, following the example of "''kanji''", we should have a short paragraph about four-kanji compounds, called ''yoji-jukugo'', hopefully linked to an article on the subject. I'd do this myself, but I'm sure there are other, more knowledgable folks who could do a better job of it. - User:Dcljr 15:47, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC) :I almost included something about them when I threw in the extra examples just now, but on reconsideration, that should probably go somewhere else in the article. Although if someone were to write an article on ''jukugo'' in general, it probably wouldn't hurt, and would make linking much easier. --User:Aponar Kestrel User_talk:Aponar Kestrel 03:31, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC) == Massive rewriting == I've changed around some of the links to hopefully make them more useful; I've also added more of them. Some might think I've ''over''linked the article; if so, just remove the most egregious cases. I've also tried to standardize the appearance of the Japanese words used throughout the article, rendering them all in ''italics'' rather than "quotes" or with no special formatting. Exceptions are (most) references to the main writing systems: kanji, hiragana and katakana (using italics for the latter two only in the first section when they are more or less defined). Since other Wikipedia articles say there are ''four'' Japanese writing systems, I've added a mention of romaji to the intro (sans macron and sans italics, for consistency with the other three systems and with the title of the article it links to). Finally, I've completely rewritten the section on readings. I hope I've made it flow better. The factual information I added is mostly from ''Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide'' (ISBN 4-7700-1553-4) and ''Let's Learn Kanji'' (also Kodansha, ISBN 4-7700-2068-6). I tried to use all the info that was already in the article, but I had to excise this sentence: *''The word "kanji"(漢字) is a perfect example of this. Its pronunciation is derived from the Chinese word "hanzi".'' - User:Dcljr 04:49, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC) BTW, duplication with other articles on related topics (mentioned above) can be dealt with using "''Main article''" or "''For more information, see...''" or some such thing, as done in other Wikipedia articles (as long as the pointers to the other articles accurately reflect their relationships with this one). - User:Dcljr 05:26, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC) == Shitsuree shimashita == Thanks to the users who caught and corrected my bonehead re-romanizations of ''/(o|ku)n[-']yomi/''. - User:Dcljr 02:16, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) :"Shitsuree"? Someone's been reading something by Eleanor Harz Jorden, I take it. ^_^ Dou itasimasite. And while I'm here, I'd like to thank Ran for correcting my own boneheaded error in the '''''on'yomi''''' subsection. --User:Aponar Kestrel User_talk:Aponar Kestrel ::Yeah, unfortunately I'm used to a special form of romanization used in the textbook I had. I wish we hadn't used any rōmaji at all. I still visualize it instead of the ''kana'' when I'm trying to remember words. ''Grrr''. - User:Dcljr 04:27, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC) == #When to use which reading == ... and I possibly need to apologize for this, myself. Well, there's more text in there now, at least -- lots of shiny examples -- but this may or may not be a good thing, considering how cluttered I seem to have left it. It probably desperately needs refactoring, at the very least. --User:Aponar Kestrel User_talk:Aponar Kestrel 03:42, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC) == The direction for writing kanji? == Here's a question I was hoping to answer by reading the kanji article: in what direction is kanji written? (There may be a technical term for this.) Is it left-to-right then top-down? Or is that an accomodation to English and the Internet? I often seem to see kanji written primarily top-down (and then left-to-right or right-to-left?). Is that traditional? Obsolete? I suspect that this would be a good topic to add to the article. :Good question, but I think related to combinations of characters rather than single Kanjis. Japanese phrases are traditionally written top-down and added from right to left. With Western influence now they are often written left to right, and added from top to bottom. In pre-war texts, and today when written on the side of a vehicule (presumably to facilitate reading text on a moving vehicule), phrases are written right to left. If your question relates to the brushstroke order and direction in a single Kanji, I am afraid it is a very difficult question without a simple answer, and these have to be learnt for every single Kanji.User:PHG 09:50, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC) :Vehicles can have text that reads from left to right, or from right to left. Left-to-right text is more common, and often found on both sides and on the back, whereas right-to-left, when it's used, is usually only on the right side of the vehicle, where right-to-left coincides with front-to-back. Again, as PHG said, that's the sequence for phrases of text (not individual strokes within a single kanji). User:Fg2 10:00, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC) ::To make sure I understand, let me suggest this addition to the article. If it holds for all hanzi derived writing, maybe it should be added to Chinese character. ----

Kanji can be written either horizontally or vertically. Traditionally, kanji are written top-to-bottom and then added right-to-left:

5	0
6	1
7	2
8	3
9	4

With Western influence, they are now often written left-to-right and then added top-to-bottom (just like English):

0	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9

To facilitate reading kanji on a moving vehicle, kanji can be written front-to-back. That is left-to-right on the port side and right-to-left on the starboard side.

4	3	2	1	0	front	0	1	2	3	4

---- This is not really a kanji question, it's a Japanese-writing-system question. Kanji is just one component of the Japanese writing system, and you can't discuss the writing direction of kanji in isolation from the rest. Anyhow: Until WW2, Japanese was mostly written top-down, right to left (particularly in newspaper articles and longer works of prose), or right-to-left, top down. Since the war, it is written top-down, right to left (as before) or left-to-right, top down. Books, being almost always written top-down, open at the opposite side from what English-speakers expect; magazines (which may use a combination of the two) are not predictable. The only modern situation where you see horizontal RTL is on the sides of trucks so that they read front-to-back. User:Adamrice 02:07, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) == proper nouns (place and personal names) that do not (cannot) have Kanji == From Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English *Article: :ja:さいたま市#地名の由来 (just this segment) *Corresponding English-language article: Saitama, Saitama#Toponym *Worth doing because: Saitama seems to be one of the few large cities whose name doesn't have Kanji. The origin of this name is hard to find on English webpages. *Originally requested by: --User:Menchi 10:29, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC) *Status: I have translated it, hopefully this is helpful! User:CES 06:14, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC) *Other notes: Adding a paragraph on those proper nouns (place and personal names) that do not (cannot) have Kanji in Kanji would be informative too. Just briefly, Saitama City (-shi) is written in kana to differentiate it from Saitama Prefecture (-ken). The kanji for Saitama is 埼玉. User:Exploding Boy 15:40, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC) == changes == A few changes I made: *Not all foreign words were written in phonetically spelled kanji. "tabako", for instance, was written with the kanji for "smoke" and "grass" (a spelling you still see occasionally). *Added a comment about Morohashi's kanji dictionary *The word is "akagane", not "akakane". *I have trouble putting Japanese in, so I can't make this change. But "juubako" only refers to compound words in which the first kanji is an on-yomi and the second is kun-yomi. There's a separate term for the other way around, which I don't remember at the moment. *I have never seen the term "Essential Kanji" used for the grade-school kanji except in the title of one textbook for English speakers. In addition, 881 is an obsolete number -- the grade school kanji list was expanded to 1006 in 1981 (at the same time the Jouyou list was introduced). == reverse importation of Kanji...? == Can anyone cite any evidence that made-in-Japan kanji are actually used in China? Just because the character for "hataraku" has an onyomi doesn't mean that it's been taken into China--it just means that the Japanese came up with an onyomi for it. User:Adamrice 17:12, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) :I believe the answer to your original question would be "NO". First of all, there are not many made-in-Japan "kanji" because Kanji literally means Chinese characters in Japanese. So even if there are Japanese variations, the original Chinese version will be used instead in China. The answer to your specific question about 働 hataraku is a no also. The onyomi was based on the right half of the character which is Chinese. Chinese 勞動 vs Japanese 労働. The Japanese character 働 is never used in Chinese. Do a search in Google and specify this character and restrict the result to Chinese pages only. You will some webpages using this character, but they are mostly Japanese pages mislabeled as Chinese pages. They are some Chinese pages using this character in the context of referring to the Japanese Labor ministry. I don't count that as reverse importation. IMHO, the statement in the article about reverse importation is incorrect. :However, if your question is modified a bit by replacing the word "kanji" with "Japanese terminologies", then the answer is a little bit different. Hong Kong is a Chinese place which is influenced heavily by foreign culture. Some Japanese terminologies sometimes appear in taboid publications for the novality effects, e.g. the Japanese term 人気女優 will be written as 人氣女優 to mean popular Japanese actresses. Most Chinese who are not fans of Japanese culture would not understand what the novality term means. Therefore such usage can be found, but are very uncommon. And such term is never used on non-Japanese actresses. By the way 優 was an archaic Chinese word that means actor, but such meaning is no longer used in modern Chinese, though Japanese preserved the original meaning. Note that 気 is one of the rare Made-in-Japan Kanji that you mentioned. It is a variation for 氣 or 气. And Chinese don't use the Japanese version at all. Even when Japanese terminologies are used in China, the characters would be written and pronounced the Chinese way, not in the Japanese way. :There are a few Japanese characters that show up in Chinese publications too. One example is the Japanese Yen currency symbol 円 which is sometimes used but not very common either because there is another way to write Yen in Chinese characters. Another example is Japanese rice (Donburi 丼). The character is sometime used in magazine ads for Japanese restaurants. Again, regular Chinese won't know what it means. Ironically, this 丼 character is actually an archaic Chinese character that is no longer in use in modern Chinese. In ancient literature, this character means the sound of an object dropping into a water well. The character is written as a dot inside the "Water well" character. In Mandarin, it is pronounced as ㄉㄢˇ. In Cantonese, this character is pronounced as "Dum". The term is still used in daily Cantonese conversation but not many people know this ancient character and the verbal expression ''Dum'' is related. The Japanese probably borrowed the word by its sound, Dum for Donburi or borrowed for its shape, a dot representing the rice in the middle of a box. User:Kowloonese 22:28, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) ::Thanks for that. The case with 気 vs its Chinese equivalents is really just a matter of 新字体 vs 旧字体; the 働 character is semantically different (at least in Japan) from 動 and is a different case. Most 国字 are for plants and animals, as far as I know, and 働 is both the only everyday 国字 I can think of, and the only one with an 音読み. It's also the case that Japanese hangs on to some kanji archaisms that have gone out of fashion in China, just as there are a few words in American English that have gone out of style in British English (eg "gotten"). I'm going to revise the article to take that reverse-importation bit out. Many Chinese scientific and polisci terminology terms are Japanese imports as well. --User:Menchi 22:37, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) :Agree. There were many Japanese terminology and concept imports. But they are not Kanji import as in the 働 hataraku character mentioned in the article. IMHO, the reverse importation is plainly wrong. Japanese kokuji (国字; literally "national characters") are NOT used by Chinese, period. User:Kowloonese 23:02, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Changing "cursive" hiragana to "curvilinear" == This is my first posting in wikipedia, please be gentle. I wanted to post here before I make the edit. I note that this article refers to hiragana as a "cursive" writing system. I believe this is incorrect because Cursive as documented in Wikipedia refers to writing where the characters are joined. Hirigana characters no more joined than katakana or kanji characters. I believe the mistake comes from the similarity of "cursive" to "curvilinear," which I believe is the correct word. I will make the edit if nobody objects. User:Toastcontrol 11:00, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) : I think I'm the one who put the word "cursive" in there in the first place. I agree that it may not be a perfect fit, in that hiragana characters are not run together (generally--although if you look at the scrolls from the Tales of Genji, you'll see they can be). Rather, the many strokes that go into the source kanji are consolidated and run together. There may be a more precise word for this phenomenon than "cursive," but I'm not convinced that "curvilinear" is it (which might better describe gyosho-style kanji). User:Adamrice 20:25, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) ________ Hirigana ''may'' run together in cursive fashion, as may kanji or even katakana when represented in an artistic fashion such as shodo. But that is not a defining characteristic of any of those writing systems. I believe "curvilinear" (formed, bounded, or characterized by curved lines) aptly captures the contrast between hiragana and katakana, more than any other single word. == where did this come from? == I just ran across the following section in this article: "Hiragana is also used in books for young children and to impart a softer tone to words and requests. Words or parts of words like kudasai (ください please) and kodomo (子ども children) are usually written in hiragana. Conversely, because of its angularity, katakana came to be used for representing onomatopoeia, harsh and sudden sounds, animal noises, and foreign words. " I'd like to see some kind of academic citation to back up these assertions, which I find incredible. There's nothing about its angularity that makes katakana better suited to loan words, just as there's nothing about its flowing lines that makes italics better suited to loan words in English. It's just a matter of convention. The bit about "子ども" usually being written in hiragana is self-contradicting. Finally, this stuff would belong in the kana article (f iit it belonged anywhere, which I contend it does not). User:Adamrice 01:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC) :Some explanation of why kana are used instead of kanji in some situations does not seem out of place in an article about kanji to me. :I agree about the angularity part though, although it would not be out of place to mention that katakana can be used to add emphasis to a word usually written in kanji or hiragana. ::"Hiragana is also used in books for young children and to impart a softer tone to words and requests. Words or parts of words like kudasai (ください please) and kodomo (子ども children) are usually written in hiragana. :This seems alright to me, 子供 can be written as 子ども to make it easier to read for children, and ください has a gentler conotation then 下さい. User:JeroenHoek 19:42, 9 May 2005 (UTC) == Removed a false link == I removed this link: The JLPT Kanji (http://www.jlpt-kanji.com) project lists the full Jōyō kanji required for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test The site listed above is using out-dated material. For example the current JLPT test contents specification lists 103 kanji for Level 4, but the above site lists only 80 kanji for Level 4. White Rabbit Press (http://www.whiterabbitpress.us) is using the most current test contents specification. ==JIS Kanji== I have expanded the JIS Kanji section to cover the other JIS standards. User:Jimbreen 02:45, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Types of Kanji: by category == I have added a new section extracted from my page at: [http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjitypes.html http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjitypes.html]. It seemed appropriate given the other categorization of kanji in the article. User:Jimbreen 05:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) :That's an excellent addition, Jim. User:Adamrice 17:11, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Kanji

Japanese language Logographic writing systems

See other meanings of words starting from letter:

K