Japan didn’t give up, and used kanji as a base to develop its own alphabets. After the language reforms, there are about 2000 kanjis used in Japan nowadays (but more exist, and sometimes you might come across such characters). It takes years to learn all of them. Now that more than a thousand years have passed, why do we still use kanji in modern Japanese language?! That’s because Japanese language is homophone - which means that there are lots of words which sound the same, but have a different meaning. That’s why there’s so many nodding and hmmm-ing in spoken Japanese to clarify you understand the person talking. If you write them down, using kanjis, it is immediately clear what you mean.
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| hanabi |
Kanjis are the most difficult characters. There are usually two different ways of reading them (Japanese and ‘Chinese’ way - well, Japanese kind of Chinese). It depends on if they are standing together with another kanji, or with an affix. There are kanjis with only one reading, then there are kanjis with 3 or more readings! The more you know about them, the clearer their use of readings become. It’s really interesting to see the meaning behind the words (personal favourite: firework - hanabi, which is flower + fire).
You can look up kanjis by radicals, readings, number of strokes, or using the handwriting recognition feature in your computer / electronic dictionary. Radicals are elements which can be found in different kanjis, and they’re supposed to help you.
Next week: Let's see onsens! (as always, feel free to suggest something else)
Answer to my earlier question: the blue are kanjis, the green are hiraganas, and the dark red are katakanas.
Personal favourite examples of homophone words: kami (hair, paper, shintō god).
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