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ОглавлениеINTRODUCTION
This book can help you greatly reduce the time and effort involved in learning to read Japanese. It does so by introducing a method that is both effective and easy to use in memorizing the meanings and pronunciations of kanji, the array of characters that are used in the language to symbolize everything from abstract ideas to concrete nouns.
Learning any of the kanji, you will find, is a two-step process, requiring that you remember both the visual aspect of a character (so you can recognize it when you see it) and the aural aspect (so you will know how to say and, thus, read it). The method presented here will show you how to tackle both of these aspects from the outset, and by so doing enable you to immediately get down to the practical (and fun!) business of recognizing and reading kanji on everything from street signs to newspapers. By the time you finish this book, in fact, you will be able to boast of a Japanese vocabulary numbering in the thousands of words.
Kanji and the Japanese Writing System
Kanji (literally, “Chinese characters”) arrived in Japan along with Buddhism and other aspects of Chinese culture approximately 1,500 years ago. As with many concepts introduced into the country from abroad, this writing system was gradually shaped and modified over the centuries to better suit the Japanese themselves. Kanji today comprise one part of written Japanese, being used alongside a pair of much simpler phonetic syllabaries, katakana and hiragana. Katakana are generally employed to denote foreign words, as well as various technical and scientific terms. Hiragana, on the other hand, have a largely grammatical function, and are used for everything from verb endings to particles. As you can see from the examples below, katakana and hiragana are visually similar; they never contain more than four strokes. Kanji, however, are more varied; they can have anywhere from one to more than 20 strokes.
Hiragana: か き く け こ
Katakana: カ キ ク ケ コ
Kanji: 東 曜 秋 語 意
Written Japanese is thus a mixture of three elements, and a single sentence can have all three present, as in the following example.
アフリカで水牛とキリンを見ました。
I saw a water buffalo and a giraffe in Africa.
Number and Frequency of Kanji
As katakana and hiragana can be learned quickly (there are only around fifty of each), this book will focus exclusively on learning kanji. It’s worth keeping in mind that the Japanese Ministry of Education has stipulated that high school students in Japan are expected to learn 2,136 characters (the so-called “general-use” kanji) by the time they graduate. Magazines and newspapers can employ upwards of 3,000 kanji, although these “extra” characters are often accompanied by hiragana showing how they are to be pronounced; without this, most Japanese would often be unsure of both the meaning of the character in question and its pronunciation.
Despite there being so many kanji, it is important to understand that some are used far more frequently than others. The 500 most common, for example, make up approximately 80% of the kanji you will see. The 1,000 most common bring this figure to over 90%. Learning the 520 kanji presented in this volume, therefore, will offer great immediate benefit.
The Composition of Kanji
In general, kanji dictionaries divide characters into groups that share a common part (called a “radical”). As you can see below, the kanji in the first row all share the same left-hand radical. The kanji in the second row share the same top while the radical in the third row appears in various positions.
| 休 | 化 | 体 |
| 安 | 家 | 字 |
| 冬 | 夏 | 愛 |
At times this book will break kanji apart into fragments smaller than radicals. To keep things simple, all radicals and parts that make up a kanji – but are not themselves kanji – are called components, and will always be presented in a separate text box immediately before the first character in which they appear.
Stroke Order
Stroke order refers to the sequence of lines that are used to correctly write out a kanji. Knowing this order is important for several reasons. First, it will help train you to quickly count the number of strokes in a character, and thus make it easier to locate unfamiliar kanji (or those for which pronunciations may have been forgotten) in a kanji dictionary. It will also aid you in breaking down characters visually, making it easier to see the components that will help you recall a kanji’s meaning. Stroke order diagrams accompany each entry in this book. The accompanying in addition, provides an animated graphic showing each character being written in its proper order.
An Overview of On-yomi and Kun-yomi
On-yomi and kun-yomi are the two main branches of pronunciation (or “readings”, as they are called) that are present in modern day Japanese. On-yomi are sometimes called the “Chinese readings” of the kanji, as these were the initial pronunciations attached to the characters when they first arrived from China. The kun-yomi, on the other hand, developed from within Japan, and are thus referred to as “Japanese readings”. This, along with the fact that different on-yomi for the same character sometimes arrived from China centuries later, helps explain how a single kanji in Japanese can sometimes have more than one of each type of reading.
Clearly, memorizing these various pronunciations and knowing when to use them are two of the most difficult tasks in learning Japanese. There are, however, reasons to be optimistic. Over 60% of the kanji have only a single on-yomi, or one on-yomi and one kun-yomi. In addition, when multiple on- or kun-yomi are present, there is usually only one dominant reading for each. This book will help you determine the most important pronunciations to be learned by classifying every reading as either “common” or “less common”. Those that are less common do not merit being learned at this stage of your language study; they are presented only for future reference.
An interesting aspect of Japanese (and an unlucky one for us in this volume!) is that the most complex kanji in terms of pronunciation are often amongst the most simple to write. Do not get discouraged, therefore, when thorny characters such as “person” (Entry 2), “one” (Entry 3), “sun” (Entry 6), and “large” (Entry 17) all show up in the first chapter, as these can be classified with the most difficult in the language. Be patient with such characters, and take comfort in knowing that by the time you finish this book you will have dealt with the trickiest entries in the entire range of the general-use kanji.
Rules for Using On-yomi and Kun-yomi
There are some useful ground rules that you should keep in mind when learning to read single kanji and compounds (words formed from several kanji put together):
1. Kanji in most compounds are usually read with their on-yomi. Note, that when the pronunciations for on-yomi are given, these are conventionally written in katakana, and indicated by uppercase letters in English.
| KANJI | PRONUNCIATION | MEANING |
| 火山 | KA·ZAN カ · ザン | volcano |
| 家具 | KA·GU カ · グ | furniture |
| 弓道 | KYŪ·DŌ キュウ · ドウ | (Japanese) archery |
| 同時 | DŌ·JI ドウ · ジ | simultaneous |
2. Compounds only rarely mix on-yomi and kun-yomi. Note here that kun-yomi are conventionally written in hiragana, and indicated by lowercase letters in English.
| KANJI | PRONUNCIATION | MEANING |
| 中古車 | CHŪ·KO·SHA チュウ·コ·シャ | used car |
| 十二月 | JŪ·NI·GATSU ジュウ · ニ · ガツ | December |
| 小春 | ko·haru こ · はる | Indian summer |
| 花見 | hana·mi はな · み | cherry blossom viewing |
3. Kanji in compounds that are accompanied by hiragana are almost always read with their kun-yomi.
| KANJI (+ HIRAGANA) | PRONUNCIATION | MEANING |
| 切り下げる | ki·ri sa·geru き ·り さ ·げる | to devalue |
| 売り家 | u·ri ie う · り いえ | “House for sale” |
| 名高い | na daka·i な だか · い | renowned |
| 立ち止まる | ta·chi do·maru た · ち ど · まる | to stand still |
4. Kanji that appear alone (that is, they are not part of a compound in a sentence) are usually read with their kun-yomi.
| KANJI (+ HIRAGANA) | PRONUNCIATION | MEANING |
| 小さい | chii·sai ちい · さい | small |
| 犬 | inu いぬ | dog |
| 東 | higashi ひがし | east |
| 来る | ku·ru く · る | to come |
You may have noticed words such as “usually” and “almost always” in the above rules. One thing you will soon learn about kanji is that they seem to take delight in turning up exceptions to every rule. The best thing to do is make use of these exceptions as a means to memorize the words in which they appear. Put another way, you will be much further ahead if you learn to love headstrong words that live by their own rules!
Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds
An important consideration in learning to read Japanese is understanding the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds. Think of this difference by saying aloud the English words “brink” and “bring”; the “k” of “brink” is unvoiced, while the “g” of “bring” is voiced (you need to vibrate your vocal cords to say it). This is the same distinction, for example, between the Japanese sounds “ka” and “ga” (か and が). What you need to know is that certain kanji can turn from being unvoiced to voiced, depending on where they appear in a compound. The first entry of the previous section above provides an example: the unvoiced on-yomi SAN (サン) changes to the voiced ZAN (ザン) in the first sample word shown. Although there are an assortment of rules that explain when such changes take place, it is best to develop a “feel” for when these phonetic transformations might occur. Once this happens, your ear will develop to the point where certain compounds begin sounding more natural with one of their kanji voiced.
Irregular Readings
It sometimes occurs in Japanese that a kanji compound has an irregular reading. Known as jukujikun, such readings have no relation to the normal on- or kun-yomi of their component kanji. Rather, these irregular readings are assigned to entire compounds rather than to their component kanji.
You will encounter the first of these in Entry 2. In all three such irregular readings shown there, the reading of the kanji “人” is completely different from what we would expect it to be normally. In a sense, this is much like the problem foreigners face when learning English; the pronunciation of the word “cough”, for example, has little connection with the normal sound of the letters from which it is made. Fortunately there are not many irregular readings to be learned (less than fifty appear in this book), but as they are all in common use it is best to come to grips with them the moment they are encountered, by memorizing them as individual words. All irregular readings in this book will be presented separately from the “COMMON WORDS AND COMPOUNDS” section, to make it clear that these are some truly oddball pronunciations.
A Method for Memorizing the Visual and Aural Aspects of Kanji
As we have seen, kanji are typically more visually complex than hiragana and katakana. Because of this, a good way to simplify the task of committing kanji to memory is to look at their constituent parts. We will do just that, breaking the characters down piece-by-piece and assigning meanings to these components based exclusively on how they look. When these various components then join together to build kanji, we will make use of short stories featuring the pieces as “actors”, accompanied by drawings to help solidify the appearance of the characters in a unique way. This part of our memorization approach, therefore, will focus exclusively on the visual aspect of each kanji.
For the aural side of the equation, we need to take one other difference between the on- and kun-yomi into account when devising our memorization strategy: there are far fewer on-yomi to learn than kun-yomi. This is because on-yomi are not often complete words on their own – it helps to think of them as short “blocks” of sound that in most cases form words only when they are strung together. (It is worth keeping in mind, though, that the kanji for numbers are a notable exception to this.) Given that roughly 300 on-yomi suffice to cover the entire range of Japan’s 2,136 general-use characters, a single reading can be attached to many different kanji. SHŌ (ショウ), for example, is an on-yomi for more than 60 characters. We will be taking advantage of this aspect of Japanese to cut down on the work involved in memorizing these readings.
Our basic plan for committing both the on-yomi and kun-yomi to memory will be to come up with English keywords that approximate their sounds as closely as possible, and to use these in sentences that also contain a word encompassing the general meaning of the character.
As an example, the kanji for “two” has an on-yomi of NI (ニ), and a kun-yomi of futa (ふた). If we choose the word “knee” to suggest NI, and the phrase “who ta ns” for futa, a possible sentence might be the following: “TWO knees? Who ta ns only those?”. This second side to our approach, therefore, will focus exclusively on the aural aspect of a kanji.
A useful shortcut will involve using the same on-yomi keyword every time a kanji having that reading appears (recall that many kanji can share the same on-yomi). In the preceding example, therefore, the word “knee” will be used each time a kanji with the on-yomi “NI” crops up, and will simply be combined with the different kun-yomi and meaning of the new kanji. A major advantage of this approach is that it will make easily confused on-yomi such as HŌ (ホウ) and HO (ホ) absolutely distinctive in your mind, as you will have assigned different keywords to each of these. Given their importance (they will need to be used over and over again with different kanji), the creation of on-yomi keywords will be left up to you once a few examples have been provided at the beginning of Chapter 1 – your sentences will be more memorable if these words have a distinct personal meaning for you. The On-Yomi Keyword Table at the end of the book will help you manage your list of these keywords as it grows, and is designed to be filled in as you encounter each on-yomi in the pages ahead. By keeping all these readings in one place, you can refer to them quickly when needed.
The kun-yomi, on the other hand, are far greater in number, and therefore best learned individually. Fortunately, they tend to be more distinctive than the on-yomi, and are, as a result, often easier to remember once a unique keyword phrase has been created. In order to help with the workload in this respect, suggestions for kun-yomi keywords are provided through the first ten chapters of this book, but you should not hesitate to use an idea of your own should one spring immediately to mind.
Presentation of the Entries in This Book
Each entry will offer one kanji along with a word embracing its broadest possible meaning, followed by a grid showing its stroke order. Next, you’ll see a list of the components making up the character, together with reference numbers indicating the points at which these have been introduced earlier in the book. After a short background section describes the various shades of meaning the character conveys, a story (when required) and illustration are presented to help you memorize the kanji visually. A pronunciation section then lists the most common on- and kun-yomi for the character followed by readings that you will encounter less frequently. Entries conclude with a section showing the character’s use in a number of common Japanese words, and a sample sentence in which the kanji is featured.
There is an important point to keep in mind with respect to the “Common words and compounds” table in each entry: any word or compound consisting of kanji you have already learned will be shown in bold face. This will allow you to focus on reviewing those words you have previously encountered. One useful way to review would involve covering up the right-hand columns in the table with your hand or a piece of paper, then drawing it back to reveal the individual kanji meanings, pronunciation, and the overall meaning of the word in question.
In order to make your task a bit more manageable – you’ll be mastering 520 of the most important kanji in Japanese, after all! – the book is divided into chapters of 20 to 30 entries each. This will allow you to periodically review a reasonable number of characters before proceeding onward. Short review sections at the end of each chapter will help you check your learning, along with cumulative exercises following Chapters 5, 10, 16 and 22. Use these reviews to see exactly how far you’ve come in your mastery of the kanji, and to find out which entries to return to for more practice, if you need it. You’ll find answer keys, along with indices listing kanji by stroke count, English meaning and pronunciation at the end of the book. Remember that all of the on-yomi are presented in katakana and employ upper-case Roman letters for romaji. The kun-yomi are written with hiragana, and have lower-case Roman letters for romaji.
To add an audio aspect to your kanji learning, the accompanying contains pronunciations for all the on- and kun-yomi found in this book, as well as for the sample sentences and common words in each entry; it will be particularly useful in helping you to select your on-yomi keywords. An animated graphic is also provided to show you how each kanji is written using the proper stroke order.
Learning to read kanji is fascinating; the characters, so different from those used in our own writing system, have a mysterious quality that attracts everyone who studies Japanese. As you progress through this book and see how kanji are easily able to present even the most complex ideas, it is worth keeping in mind that you are not only setting out to learn a new means of written communication, but another way of conceptualizing the world around you. It’s an exciting task, and by using the present book as your guide you will find this process to be not only interesting, but fun. So let’s jump right in – and start learning Japanese kanji!
