掲示板 Forums - Figuring out kanji
Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese
Hi! Not a question, just wanted to share an observation 
Japanese kanji are the first logographic writing system I've ever studied, so I find the process of it sticking to my memory very interesting. Before Japanese, I only got to learn languages that use alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic). With them, as with hiragana and katakana, you only have to learn the symbols once and then adapt you pronunciation/accent as you go.
Kanjis are very different! You have to learn them multiple times throughout your language journey, and I assume the new ones will never stop coming, even 10-20 years down the line :D Since I don't study readings by themselves (yet), I learn the general form and meaning first, then discover one-two readings in context, and with more experience and confidence my knowledge about a particular kanji grows. At some point my brain recognizes it on sight and from the context, like:
彼は -> (kare) wa -> he + gram. marker
彼女は -> (kanojyo) wa -> she + gram. marker
図書館で -> (toshyokan) de -> library+ at
And so on. While in alphabetic languages the focus is more on the pronounciation of particular words, which can be unpredictable, here the pronounciation is predictable, but in order to predict it you have to study continuously all your life 
So, what is your experience with kanji so far? I'd love to hear about it!
Congratulations, you have now been inducted into the Kanji Appreciation Club! Seriously, when people start out, many of them find it hard to imagine that the kanji they slog through can be so enjoyable.
I love studying kanji, the fact that I often forget newly-acquired (or even old) ones doesn't frustrate me, and the thought that there will always be new kanji to discover doesn't discourage me... despite generally being an overachiever who was never allowed mistakes during formal education. It's a miracle!
Imagine a TV series you love, with the added advantage that there will always be fresh episodes coming, as exciting as ever, and that if you can't remember what happened in an older episode you can just re-watch it and get the same enjoyment over and over again. That's my view of kanji. Like a channel broadcasting an endless supply of Tom & Jerry, with a sprinkling of the beloved classic ones being rerun from time to time. And I mean the good old Tom & Jerry, not the poorly-drawn, let's-see-in-how-many-ways-we-can-squash-the-characters-plot later ones.
What's more, sometimes kanji are used for the same word to underpin slightly different meanings – see 登る、昇る, and 上る, all read as のぼる。What's more, sometimes (often in manga), a word is spelled in kanji and accompanied by a furigana-like note, which actually says something slightly different, to show the character is making an allusion or a double entendre.
About the readings: since some kanji have parts that hint at the reading, it always pays to look into that. For a long time I couldn't remember if 努 in 努力 was read ド or ドウ, until I found out it's actually connected to 奴, which I always remember to be ド from 奴隷。
Etymology is yet another fascinating rabbit hole to go down, and it helps kanji stick even better. This is, of course, only personal preference, but I find it easier (and more effective long-term, for figuring out the broader network of connections) to see why a kanji is drawn the way it is than to learn a made-up mnemonic like "it's a crocodile knitting in a tree". (Though wacky images like that help things stick too, and I have nothing against knitting crocodiles or vegetation.)
I should probably stop now, but hopefully this will show that you're nowhere near the only one and encourage you as you continue this journey. Welcome to this club, we're glad to meet you! 
Thanks everyone for the replies!
@chrissa2008 it is still quite confusing to me as well, so you're not alone in this 
@むじな thanks! I sure appreciate kanji a lot now :D
I like your TV series analogy, language learning does feel like an interesting journey with always more to come!
I haven't yet encountered the kanji/furigana double entendre, but it does sound logical that people would play with it 🤔 And the whole readings-radical relation is a curious feature, too! I'd probably start learning radical readings at some point, once I'm done with the JLPT schedules. Those in combination with etymology and historical context will give an even deeper understanding, I suppose.
@林子 this is a very useful observation, thank you for sharing! It makes sense that there's a correlation between onyomi and kunyomi readings. After all, it were real people who have adapted Chinese characters to Japanese language, so they must've simplified what they could and arranged it as logically as they were able to. Time and constant usage did the rest. Now we'll only have to rediscover it all 
@ギョルギ九十三 phonetic components vs radicals is something I struggle with as it's not always clear what is what. I guess learning the radicals by themselves will be useful here as well as the most basic kanji readings like in your examples. Maybe once the language proficiency is higher...
I have so much to say about kanji.
First, I struggled like everyone when I started. Especially with the readings.
The first time I studied kanji was with anki and because I didn't knew that you don't need to study every readings, it was just a nightmare and I gave up after a while. After that I tried a bunch of other methods like studying the radical but it didn't work that well either.
Until I tried with renshuu. Still didn't work that well immediately for various reasons but after a while, I managed to find a method that worked for me and ended up creating my own lists to study kanji. Well, I use the renshuu kanji kentei list but based on that, I created my own lists of words to study along the kanji schedule. Still on working it since 3-4 years but it was and it's still worth it :D (Just yesterday, I finished to study at least once every kanji in the kanji kentei 4級... Got impatient at the end, so I rushed the last few kanji but oh well 
)
There's a bunch of reason why I did that. For example, I thoroughly to study kanji with kanji that I didn't know (like studying a word with higher level kanji that I wasn't going to study for the next 6 month or more). I also hated to study 3 kanji compounds as a beginner when I didn't knew any of the kanji. Onyomi were hard to remember but even kunyomi were annoying. Etc.
For those reasons, I ended up creating those list. And the main criteria was "words that make kanji easier to learn". I often give the example of 雨水: 雨 (rain) + 水 (water) -> rain water. At first, I tried to study only that kind of words. And while creating my lists, I also try avoid any higher level kanji. Although, I said "I studied" those words but it was more like a guessing game. I took advantage of the renshuu system not to remember those words but just to develop my "kanji intuition". I only activated the kana->kanji/kanji->kana vector and my goal was just be able to guess the meaning from the kanji or from context like Japaneses (as well as studying the readings in a easier way).
And the bet worked well so far :D
Like, even without the kanji in front of me, I still often guess the meaning of new words (when they used kanji that I studied). In conversation, for example (I usually have some kanji that appeared in my head and I just ask for confirmation). Kanji are literaly overpowered for that. And once, you've studied and mastered enough kanji, you will be able to read things that you weren't able to read in your own language. Like scientific or technical article.
For example, 小耳症. In english, it's "microtia". Now, unless you already know that word, I doubt that I can guess what it means. But if you know your kanji, it's just 小 (small) + 耳 (ear) + 症 (symptoms) -> small ear symptoms -> microtia is a congenital deformity were the ear are undervelopped. Unlike english, words like that are very transparent once you know your kanji. I often heard from more advanced learners, as a beginner, that a lot of Japanese words don't make any sense. That's not true, like 90% make sense. But some are more abstract, for some other you need some cutural/historical knowdledge, sometimes you need an opposite or synomym to clarify the nuance. It takes times but by focusing on easier words first, kanji can become incredibly overpowered!
Well, I wanted to talk about a lot of others like kanji pattern in words or how kanji with the same part (besides radical) sometimes share some kind of "field meaning" but, well, I guess that will do for now x). Lot of fun things to discover later :D
@Shamugan that 'kanji intuition' you mentioned is a truly awesome thing! Over time kanji elements just start making sense, like, 則 -> "money" and "sword" -> "rule". They are basically mnemonics all by themselves :D
I can compare it to Latin and Ancient Greek roots in English that many people study to increase their SAT scores. In your example, "micro" in "microtia" means small. Some other examples will be "carn" (flesh) + "vor" (devour) in "carnivorous" or "mort" (death) in "immortality" and "mortification". With time, even conplicated scientific words start to make sense this way 
Edit: Just had a thought that in Japanese there are two parts you need to build intuition for: kanjis and the verbal language itself. With みる, for example, there's a wider semantic connection of "see, vision" and specific kanji choices that make sense on their own. Because kanji were borrowed later from a very different language, they still function on their own, no matter how well-inbedded into Japanese they have become 🤔
@GD_V
They are!
Though be careful, since they are a lot of debate about that. I mean, on one side, I think it's completely fine to create whatever mnenmonics from the component themselves as a speaker of the language. Natives do it all the time anyway.
On the other hand, kanji are classify purely into radical, usualy semantic component, and phonetic components. Simply because it's relatively doable to prove that a component have a phonetic role in a kanji. But it's relatively impossible to prove that a part of a kanji has a semantic role (since you're unable to know what people thought of a kanji in the past).
Personaly, I think it's fine to reinterpret kanji with modern standard because even if the original meaning is lost but kinda of a polemic topic. Also, that's the function of kanji and how people use them in the past and today too. It's fun too and natives do it, so whatever
As long as it allow me to remember one more kanji.
The comparison with Latin and Ancient Greek roots is correct but it's far less accessible than kanji. You know need additional external knowledge and even more impressive than that, Japanese can somewhat understand classical Japanese or even sometimes Chinese with their modern knowledge. Which is crazy. Ask to me read old english or old french and I will be like, what? (not the translated one but the one with the old grammar, words, and graphie...)
"Just had a thought that in Japanese there are two parts you need to build intuition for: kanjis and the verbal language itself."YEEEEES
That's also something crazy but yeah. I mean not crazy but once you understand that, you can study kanji far more efficiently and closer to how japanese learn kanji.
Japanese DON'T study the meaning of kanji. They learn words first, master those words down to the nuance and AFTER that stick kanji to those words. Not the opposite like most foreign learners do. I mean, both methods works. But the way, japanese is far more easier imo.
You first learn simple hiragana spoken words through conversation and context like みる or かえる. Eventually, you will learn and notice a few variant for words like かえる (change, going home, replace, frog, etc) that can't be distinguish without context. That context will make you understand those words down to the nuances but only the spoken nuances, not the written ones. It's easier simply because they are less variant than in written japanese. And once you already mastered, more or less, those spoken variant, you just "stick" kanji to them and further deepen your vocabulary. A japanese kid doesn't know the difference between "foot" and "leg". Because you can't differentiate them in spoken japanese (it's just あし). They only learn it much later. Easy version first, map/web of words, then the hard one later.
Other interesting aspect is that the reading themselves are often the meaning of kanji. Like for 拓. The first meaning of 拓 is just ひらく. And from there you get "clear the land", "break up the land". ひらく main image/meaning is not "open" but "enlarge a small gap". It's closer to 広げる. And from that initial image, you get meaning 開拓 (expansion, reclamation). Which is why in english you get those "clear the land", "break up the land" definition. But it's the long way around. Or a short-cut that hide the main image. But if you focus on the reading and the JP def, since renshuu has JP def now, you can uncover those image that are much powerful.
As for that part "Because kanji were borrowed later from a very different language", yes, the original language are the kunyomi, the 大和言葉 and there are the foundation of Japanese even today. Kanji were stuck to the 大和言葉, the spoken language, not the other way around. And those words exist by themselves in a web of meanings that japanese learn first before the kanji. I mean, they continuously learn it but they have a decent basis before the first kanji. And that help a lot. I mean, it's also just easier. First, learn a simple word in context and learn only one simple meaning, then stick a kanji to it and remember only one meaning/image. And later complexify that image with more words. But only after that first simple word is matured enough. Also at that point, reading manga with furigana will help a lot. Since you will just stick kanji to words you already know like Japanese do and learn (manga, game, novels, etc).
I'm talking too much but yeah, happy that someone else noticed that
Edit: Both methods have their pro and con but if you're a beginner reading that, focusing on reading or the kanji first when you start can be way harder than focusing on spoken/listening first. Well both are hard. But focusing on speaking/listening can make kanji easier to learn later and reading more "fun" imo. I cool down a little x). Shouldn't exagerate too much and make my point more neutral.
Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese