This lesson covers the basics of Kanji. A few kanji are introduced, and the concept of putting together kanji is presented.
Your First Kanji
When starting to read Kanji, many books start learning kanji through pictures, that may resemble a given kanji. I don’t know if that is the best way, instead I will start to give you some examples of simple Kanji that I believe might be useful for you if going to Japan. You will recognize them as soon as you open a manga or if you look at commercials or street signs in Japan.
Please do not feel overwhelmed if it looks too complex at first sight. You will have plenty of time to learn it step by step.
| 人 | hito, -jin | person, amount of people | ||
| 口 | kuchi, guchi | mouth, exit, entrance | ||
| 出 |
de(ru)/da(su) | exit, to leave / to let out | ||
| 入 |
hai(ru) / i(ru) | enter / insert, put in | ||
| 何 |
nan, nani | what, (how) |
Let’s look at some examples.
| 3人 です |
sannin desu | (We are) three persons. | ||
| 口 です |
kuchi desu | (It is the) mouth | ||
| 出口 です |
deguchi desu | (it’s the) exit. | ||
| 入り口 です |
iriguchi desu | (it’s the) entrance. | ||
| これ は 何 です か。 |
kore wa nan desu ka | what is this? |
Kanji + Hiragana
You probably noticed that some words are formed by adding hiragana after kanjis. This is the way for example verbs are formed. Here are some examples of words made out of kanji together with hiragana. The examples are given in -masu form for your convenience.
| 行きます | いきます |
ikimasu | to go | |||
| 来ます |
きます |
kimasu | to come | |||
| 入ります |
はいります |
hairimasu | to enter | |||
| 食べます | たべます | tabemasu | to eat | |||
| 飲みます | のみます | nomimasu | to drink |
Putting Together Kanji
To make it more complex, each kanji can have several different pronouncations, often depending on what you put it together with. Combining kanji can give you new words, for example the kanji for “people” and “mouth” becomes “population” when put together.
| 人 | jin (hito) | person | ||
| 口 | kou (kuchi) | mouth | ||
| 人口 | jinkou | population |
Please note that the order is very critical, if you put them together the opposite order it may be a completely different word, if it is a exisiting word at all. We will describe compound kanji more in (much) later chapters.
Other Useful Kanji
Here is a list of some more simple kanji that you probably will see during your first visit in Japan.
| 田中 |
たなか |
Tanaka | last name (rice field middle) | |
| 田 |
た |
ta | rice field | |
| 中 |
なか |
naka | middle | |
| 山田 |
やまだ |
Yamada | last name (mountain field) | |
| 山 |
やま |
yama | mountain | |
| 川 |
かわ |
kawa | river | |
| 東京 |
とうきょう |
toukyou | Tokyo | |
| 東 |
とう |
tou | east | |
| 京 |
きょう |
kyou | capital |
Let’s look at some sample sentences using these new kanji.
| 私 は 山田 です | watashi wa yamada desu. | I am (or “my name is”) Yamada. | ||
| 東京に すんで います | toukyou ni sunde imasu. | (I) live in tokyo |
Extras
- The compound kanji are called jukugo, 熟語.
- The word Kanji itself is spelled 漢字.
That’s it for this lesson. Practise these kanji, and look out for next lesson.
Gambatte kudasai!
/Johan
Related posts:
8:14 am on May 16th, 2011
i was wondering when should we use the kanji words..
6:35 pm on March 13th, 2011
Did you read the overview about the writing system, lesson W101, first? It is here:
http://www.studyjapanese.org/content/view/27/49
For a question this broad, it would be better to post it as a message in the forum. Please try to focus your question a little. The only answer I can think of is “Because that is how words are written in Japanese. Most words contain one or more kanji, which contribute both meanings and pronunciations to the word.” If you follow up with more questions in the forum, maybe we can help you to be less confused.
6:09 pm on March 13th, 2011
I dont understand wat kanji is can someone explain it to me more because i am clueless about wat it is and why they can be turned into compound words
12:30 am on March 11th, 2011
omoshiroii…………
1:36 am on November 11th, 2010
Ooh, thanks, Tony! It worked!
You’re the best
7:43 pm on November 10th, 2010
This is the first issue discussed on the Student Quick Start page, which directs you to the following page: http://www.studyjapanese.org/content/view/25/41/
The problem is that your browser is not finding fonts containing Japanese characters on your computer. This page will tell you some ways to solve the problem.
7:22 pm on November 10th, 2010
Does anyone else get square symbols instead of the kanji?
it makes it increasingly difficult to learn when i can’t see the kanji…
Thanks
12:38 pm on August 19th, 2010
coz i just read and write and then read the whole booklet
12:35 pm on August 19th, 2010
this is fun learning japanese
4:00 am on March 2nd, 2010
this is so good and it helps alot!!!!!
3:03 am on February 1st, 2010
You’re not going to let yourself be daunted by a mere 2000 or so new symbols to learn, are you?
Ganbatte ne! (phrase of encouragement)
2:54 am on February 1st, 2010
i’ll try my best!
7:36 am on November 8th, 2009
i prefer the interactive things that really get one involved in learning kanji. this did not really help. soz
8:36 am on October 9th, 2009
I am Chinese so I know most of the Kanji already. However, some of the Kanji are just similar but not the same in Japanese. It is easy for me to make mistake by writing the Kanji in the Chinese way.
Kanji has to be memorized one by one. We learned it the same way as we grew up. Sorry guys, there is no easy way to do it.
However, I do agree with yfm43. Each Kanji is a drawing and it has meaning. If you know where it came from, it will be much easier for you to remember how to write it. And it is also fun to know. So enjoy!
11:01 pm on September 28th, 2009
i see now.
arigatou gozaimasu
10:49 pm on September 28th, 2009
Kanji have both meanings and pronunciations whenever they are used. But the same kanji often has several different pronunciations depending on the word it is in.
For example, 人 always means something like “person”. But it is “hito” by itself, “jin” in the words amerikajin and nihonjin (American and Japanese person), “ri” in the words hitori and futari (one person and two people) and “nin” in the words sannin and tanin (three people and another person/other people).
10:44 pm on September 28th, 2009
@tony-san
so kanji are used more phonetically?
11:49 pm on September 27th, 2009
You basically have to know what the word you are reading sounds like. As your vocabulary expands, you will recognize each kanji as part of a whole word, and pronounce it correctly because you know how the entire word sounds. Until you become familiar with a lot of vocabulary words, you basically have to memorize the kanji spelling of each vocabulary word you learn.
There are some patterns– for example, a word with only one kanji in it is more likely to be read with a kunyomi than an onyomi– but these patterns tend to have exceptions– and some kanji have several kunyomi and/or several onyomi.
This is the hardest thing about learning to read words written with kanji– not the fact that there are a lot of kanji to learn, but that each kanji can be read in several different ways depending on what word it is in. Usually only one way will be correct for each word, although there are occasionally words with two correct pronunciations based on different readings of the individual kanji.
One place to practice reading words written in kanji (and to learn vocabulary in the process) is the web site readthekanji.com .
11:00 pm on September 27th, 2009
how do you know which pronunciation to use for the kanji? is there one that is used the most often?
5:44 am on September 10th, 2009
it is difficult to write kanji so i need a stroke of basics kanji please tnx…….
3:29 pm on July 4th, 2009
COOL. i never knew the soap shokubutsu really meant vegetation. i know chinese so whenever i see the advertisement i thought that mayb in japanese there’s a different meaning. haha
11:48 am on May 18th, 2009
Is there any special rule to how to write the Kanji lines, like there is a rule in which order to wirte the lines of the Hiragana and Katakana symbols? If yes, where can I found out how to write them?
11:28 am on March 31st, 2009
This must be Chinese text, not Japanese. The character 语 is a “simplified hanzi”, although it is equivalent to the traditional hanzi 語, which is also used as a kanji. The two characters 植物 by themselves do form a Japanese word pronounced shokubutsu, (植 = shoku, 物 = butsu) meaning plant(s), vegetation. 物語 is a Japanese word, monogatari (物 = mono, 語 = gatari), meaning story. But the simplified form 语 occurs only in Chinese.
6:20 am on March 31st, 2009
how to pronounce “物语” in jap?
there is one product called “shokubutsu” (植物物语), so i guess “物语” is pronounced as “butsu”.
is it correct?
7:30 am on February 3rd, 2009
i find it easier to learn kanji if i know where it’s came from, so if your finding it a little difficult then maybe look it up on the internet and it might tell you how it became to be that symbol
10:46 pm on January 29th, 2009
Hi grigoale,
I think I have data files somewhere with the most common kanji, but I am not sure if there is just one simple meaning. The list is based on newspapers, so it may not reflect usage in daily life.
I would be happy to dig up that list for you if you would like to help out in formatting it into a html, word or pdf file.
12:37 pm on January 29th, 2009
There is unfortunately a tension between the two things you are asking for: (1) kanji which are very common, and (2) kanji which have only one meaning. Most of the more common kanji have several meanings, and almost all kanji have more than one pronunciation. Please make this request again in the forum instead of as a comment here, so that we can discuss further what would really be useful.
There are many lists of kanji by the grade in which Japanese schoolchildren learn these, and also free programs such as zkanji and WaKan which enable you to specify the grade level when you are searching for kanji; I would recommend using one of these rather than a fixed list in PDF form. See the page of software links, http://www.studyjapanese.org/links/14-software
12:03 pm on January 29th, 2009
hello guys !
I want to bring a suggestion:
to make a list of 100-150 (or more) mostly used kanji which have only one meaning in japanese and how to pronounce each kanji (as pdf file) on your website ?
4:51 pm on January 15th, 2009
There are thousands of kanji. Of these, about 2000 have been designated as “general use” (jouyou) kanji, and contemporary newspapers and such are expected to restrict the kanji they use to this set, for the most part. Some additional kanji are used for names of people and places, however.
Children learn about 1000 of these kanji in the first through sixth grades of school. An adult with a college education is likely to know at least 3500 kanji.
The numbers are even higher for the Chinese language, from which the kanji were originally adopted.
3:19 pm on January 15th, 2009
Very complicated. Is there a table of Kanji like the hiragana and katakana tables or is it not that simple?
How many kanjii symbols are there?
7:41 am on December 15th, 2008
I find it a little difficult!
