Kanji
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (January 2024) |
Kanji | |
---|---|
Script type | |
Time period | 5th century AD – present |
Direction | Vertical right-to-left, left-to-right |
Languages | Old Japanese, Kanbun, Japanese, Ryukyuan languages, Hachijō |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Sister systems | Hanja, zhuyin, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, chữ Hán, chữ Nôm, Khitan script, Jurchen script, Tangut script, Yi script |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Hani (500), Han (Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja) |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Han |
Kanji (
The term kanji in Japanese literally means "Han characters".[4] It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese, and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as hanzi (traditional Chinese:
Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or the other. For example,
Japanese writing |
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Components |
Uses |
Transliteration |
History[edit]
Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China.[9] The earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Wa emissary in 57 AD.[10] Chinese coins as well as inkstones from the first century AD have also been found in Yayoi period archaeological sites.[6] [7] However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread.[6] According to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, a semi-legendary scholar called Wani was dispatched to Japan by the (Korean) Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters.[11]
The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court.[6] For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.[11]
In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called mokkan (
The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (794–1185), a system known as kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on the fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. This was essentially a kind of codified sight translation.
Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana (literally "fluttering kana" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or onna-de, that is, "ladies' hand",[12] 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 (literally "partial kana", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are descended from kanji. In contrast with kana (
In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems), while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings (okurigana), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.
Orthographic reform and lists of kanji[edit]
Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it.[13] Kamo no Mabuchi, a scholar of the Edo period, criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for the limitation of kanji.
After the Meiji Restoration and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread.
However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the Japanese Army decided on the "Table of Restricted Kanji for Weapons Names" (
In 1946, after World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan, the Japanese government, guided by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, instituted a series of orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals.
The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established.
Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called shinjitai (
These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as hyōgaiji (
Kyōiku kanji[edit]
The kyōiku kanji (
Jōyō kanji[edit]
The jōyō kanji (
Jinmeiyō kanji[edit]
As of September 25, 2017, the jinmeiyō kanji (
Hyōgai kanji[edit]
Hyōgai kanji (
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji[edit]
The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Greek alphabet, Arabic numerals, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
- JIS X 0208,[16] the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
- JIS X 0212,[17] a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete.
- JIS X 0213,[18] a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,695 additional kanji, of which 2,743 (all but 952) were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding.
- JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.
Gaiji[edit]
Gaiji (
Gaiji can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products.[19] Both are a problem for information interchange, as the code point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another.
Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940.[20] JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved to Unicode negating the need for gaiji for most users. Nevertheless, they persist today in Japan's three major mobile phone information portals, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters).
Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets)[21][22] technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.
The Text Encoding Initiative uses a ⟨g⟩ element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji.[23] (The g stands for gaiji.)[24]
Total number of kanji[edit]
There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The Zhonghua Zihai, published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but the majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms.[25][26][27]
A list of 2,136 jōyō kanji (
Readings[edit]
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Overly verbose 'readings' section. (March 2022) |
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2022) |
Borrowing typology of Han characters | ||
---|---|---|
Meaning | Pronunciation | |
a) semantic on | L1 | L1 |
b) semantic kun | L1 | L2 |
c) phonetic on | — | L1 |
d) phonetic kun | — | L2 |
*With L1 representing the language borrowed from (Chinese) and L2 representing the borrowing language (Japanese).[28] |
Individual kanji may be used to write one or more different words or morphemes, leading to different pronunciations or "readings." The correct reading is determined by contextual cues (such as whether the character represents part of a compound word versus an independent word), the exact intended meaning of the word, and its position within the sentence. For example,
Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi (
However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku (
Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is
On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading)[edit]
The on'yomi (
Kun'yomi (native reading)[edit]
The kun'yomi (
Ateji[edit]
Ateji (
The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese varieties, where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters—borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.
Gairaigo[edit]
Longer readings exist for non-Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where a long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi—see single character gairaigo, below)—the character
Mixed readings [edit]
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jūbako (
Formally, these are referred to as jūbako-yomi (
Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance the city of Sapporo (サッポロ), whose name derives from the Ainu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the on-kun compound
Special readings[edit]
Gikun (
Gikun are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading
Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example,
Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as Yamato (
Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being kera (
Jukujikun are quite varied. Often the kanji compound for jukujikun is idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese. For example,
The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji) or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word
In rare cases jukujikun is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective
Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings.
Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji, though in narrow usage "ateji" refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas "jukujikun" refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling).
Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began life as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally a single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is hototogisu (lesser cuckoo), which may be spelt in a great many ways, including
Single character gairaigo[edit]
In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language (gairaigo), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include pēji (
Nanori[edit]
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori (
When to use which reading[edit]
Although there are general rules for when to use on'yomi and when to use kun'yomi, the language is littered with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given character may have multiple kun'yomi or on'yomi. When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes words (multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings, rather than individual characters, and only guess readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word.
Homographs exist, however, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot, requiring a glossary. For example,
In some cases multiple readings are common, as in
The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by okurigana (hiragana characters that are part of the word)—as used in native verbs and adjectives—always indicates kun'yomi, while kanji compounds (kango) usually use on'yomi, which is usually kan-on; however, other on'yomi are also common, and kun'yomi are also commonly used in kango.
For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their kun'yomi, though there are numerous exceptions. For example,
Okurigana (
Kanji occurring in compounds (multi-kanji words) (
These rules of thumb have many exceptions. Kun'yomi compound words are not as numerous as those with on'yomi, but neither are they rare. Examples include
Similarly, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in isolation:
Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is
Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example,
As stated above, jūbako and yutō readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading are possible: on-on, kun-kun, kun-on and on-kun.
Legalese[edit]
Certain words take different readings depending on whether the context concerns legal matters or not. For example:
Word | Common reading | Legalese reading |
---|---|---|
ketai | kaitai | |
kyōbai | keibai | |
kyōdai shimai | keitei shimai | |
kyōkai | keikai | |
kyōraku | keiraku | |
yuigon | igon |
For legal contexts where distinction must be made for homophonous words such as baishun and karyō, see Ambiguous readings below.
Ambiguous readings[edit]
In some instances where even context cannot easily provide clarity for homophones, alternative readings or mixed readings can be used instead of regular readings to avoid ambiguity. For example:
Ambiguous reading | Disambiguated readings |
---|---|
baishun | baishun ( kaishun ( |
itoko | jūkeitei ( jūshimai ( jūkei ( jūshi ( jūtei ( jūmai ( |
jiten | kotobaten ( kototen ( mojiten ( |
kagaku | kagaku ( |
karyō | ayamachiryō ( |
kōshin | Kinoesaru ( Kinoetatsu ( Kanoesaru ( Kanoetatsu ( |
Shin | Hatashin ( Susumushin ( |
shiritsu | ichiritsu ( |
There are also cases where the words are technically heterophones, but they have too similar meanings and pronunciations, therefore liable to mishearing and misunderstanding. These cases call for alternative readings.
Word with an alterantive reading | Word that may be confused with |
---|---|
gishu ( |
gishi ( |
shuchō ( |
shichō ( |
Place names[edit]
Several famous place names, including those of Japan itself (
Japanese family names are also usually read with kun'yomi:
Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may differ widely from that used by modern Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's name is pronounced as Mō Takutō (
Today, Chinese names that are not well known in Japan are often spelled in katakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana. Many such cities have names that come from non-Chinese languages like Mongolian or Manchu. Examples of such not-well-known Chinese names include:
English name | Japanese name | ||
---|---|---|---|
Rōmaji | Katakana | Kanji | |
Harbin | Harubin | ハルビン | 哈爾 |
Ürümqi | Urumuchi | ウルムチ | |
Qiqihar | Chichiharu | チチハル | |
Lhasa | Rasa | ラサ |
Internationally renowned Chinese-named cities tend to imitate the older English pronunciations of their names, regardless of the kanji's on'yomi or the Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, and can be written in either katakana or kanji. Examples include:
English name | Mandarin name (Pinyin) | Hokkien name (Tâi-lô) | Cantonese name (Yale) | Japanese name | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kanji | Katakana | Rōmaji | ||||
Hong Kong | Xianggang | Hiong-káng / Hiang-káng | Hēung Góng | ホンコン | Honkon | |
Macao/Macau | Ao'men | ò-mn̂g / ò-bûn | Ou Mùhn | マカオ | Makao | |
Shanghai | Shanghai | Siōng-hái / Siāng-hái | Seuhng Hói | シャンハイ | Shanhai | |
Beijing/Peking | Beijing | Pak-kiann | Bāk Gīng | ペキン | Pekin | |
Nanjing/Nanking | Nanjing | Lâm-kiann | Nàahm Gīng | ナンキン | Nankin | |
Taipei | Taibei | Tâi-pak | Tòih Bāk | タイペイ / タイホク | Taipei / Taihoku | |
Kaohsiung | Gaoxiong / Dagou | Ko-hiông | Gōu Hùhng | カオシュン / タカオ | Kaoshun / Takao |
Notes:
- Guangzhou, the city, is pronounced Kōshū, while Guangdong, its province, is pronounced Kanton, not Kōtō (in this case, opting for a Tō-on reading rather than the usual Kan-on reading).
- Kaohsiung was originally pronounced Takao (or similar) in Hokkien and Japanese. It received this written name (kanji/Chinese) from Japanese, and later its spoken Mandarin name from the corresponding characters. The English name "Kaohsiung" derived from its Mandarin pronunciation. Today it is pronounced either カオシュン or タカオ in Japanese.
- Taipei is generally pronounced たいほく in Japanese.
In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing (rendaku), as in
Pronunciation assistance[edit]
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes 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. It is also used in newspapers and manga for rare or unusual readings, or for situations like the first time a character's name is given, and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use furigana to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.
Spelling words[edit]
Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji word—whether the pronunciation is known or not—can be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanji—indeed there are many homophonous words, not simply individual characters, particularly for kango (with on'yomi). It is easiest to write the word out—either on paper or tracing it in the air—or look it up (given the pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated), various techniques can be used. These include giving kun'yomi for characters—these are often unique—using a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word kōshinryō (
Dictionaries[edit]
In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed in hiragana (for both kun and on readings), while borrowings (gairaigo)—including modern borrowings from Chinese—are glossed in katakana; this is the standard writing convention also used in furigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are conventionally written in katakana for on readings, and hiragana for kun readings. Kun readings may further have a separator to indicate which characters are okurigana, and which are considered readings of the character itself. For example, in the entry for
Local developments and divergences from Chinese[edit]
Since kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern traditional Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity with Classical Chinese pronunciation imported to Japan from the 5th to 9th centuries.[40] Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from hanzi used in modern Chinese. Such differences are the result of:
- the use of characters created in Japan,
- characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and
- post-World War II simplifications (shinjitai) of the character.
Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.
Kokuji [edit]
In Japanese, Kokuji (
Kokkun[edit]
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese that are different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (
Char. | Japanese | Chinese | ||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Reading | Meaning | Pinyin | Meaning | |||||||||||||||||||||
fuji | wisteria | téng | rattan, cane, vine | |||||||||||||||||||||
oki | offing, offshore | chōng | rinse, minor river (Cantonese) | |||||||||||||||||||||
tsubaki | Camellia japonica | chūn | Toona spp. | |||||||||||||||||||||
ayu | sweetfish | nián | catfish (rare, usually written | |||||||||||||||||||||
saki | blossom | xiào | smile (rare, usually written |
Types of kanji by category[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2022) |
Han-dynasty scholar Xu Shen, in his 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, classified Chinese characters into six categories (Chinese:
Shōkei moji (象形 文字 )[edit]
Shōkei (Mandarin: xiàngxíng) characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example,
Shiji moji (指事 文字 )[edit]
Shiji (Mandarin: zhǐshì) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as
Kaii moji (会意 文字 )[edit]
Kaii (Mandarin: huìyì) characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is
Keisei moji (形声 文字 )[edit]
Keisei (Mandarin: xíngshēng) characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so keisei moji will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to kun'yomi. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.
Tenchū moji (転注 文字 )[edit]
Tenchū (Mandarin: zhuǎnzhù) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example,
Kasha moji (仮借 文字 )[edit]
Kasha (Mandarin: jiǎjiè) are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar-sounding word. For example,
Related symbols[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2022) |
The 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 iroiro (
Another abbreviated symbol is ヶ, in appearance a small katakana "ke", but actually a simplified version of the kanji 箇, a general counter. It is pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as
The way how these symbols may be produced on a computer depends on the operating system. In macOS, typing じおくり will reveal the symbol 々 as well as ヽ, ゝ and ゞ. To produce 〻, type おどりじ. Under Windows, typing くりかえし will reveal some of these symbols, while in Google IME, おどりじ may be used.
Collation[edit]
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character
Other kanji sorting methods, such as the SKIP system, have been devised by various authors.
Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kana representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The gojūon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.
Kanji education[edit]
Japanese schoolchildren are expected to learn 1,026 basic kanji characters, the kyōiku kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The kyōiku kanji list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji characters and extended to 2,136 in 2010, known as the jōyō kanji—characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade.[42] Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and radical.
Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used in James Heisig's series Remembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix by Michael Rowley, are also seen.
The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation provides the Kanji kentei (
See also[edit]
- Chinese influence on Japanese culture
- Braille kanji
- Hanja (Korean equivalent)
- Chữ Hán (Vietnamese equivalent)
- Han unification
- Chinese family of scripts
- Japanese script reform
- Japanese typefaces (shotai)
- Japanese writing system
- Kanji of the year
- List of kanji by stroke count
- Radical (Chinese character)
- Stroke order
- Table of kanji radicals
- Rōmaji – method of writing Japanese with the Latin alphabet
- Cangjie – legendary inventor of Chinese characters
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
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Sources[edit]
- DeFrancis, John (1990). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6.
- Hadamitzky, W.; Spahn, M. (1981). Kanji and Kana. Boston: Tuttle.
- Hannas, William. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X.
- Kaiser, Stephen (1991). "Introduction to the Japanese Writing System". Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-1553-4.
- Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. New York, NY; London, England: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-30575-6.
- Morohashi, Tetsuji.
大 漢和 辞典 Dai Kan-Wa Jiten (Comprehensive Chinese–Japanese Dictionary) 1984–1986. Tokyo: Taishukan. - Mitamura, Joyce Yumi; 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. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510166-9.
External links[edit]
- Jim Breen's WWWJDIC server used to find Kanji from English or romanized Japanese
- Change in Script Usage in Japanese: A Longitudinal Study of Japanese Government White Papers on Labor, discussion paper by Takako Tomoda in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, August 19, 2005.
- Jisho—Online Japanese dictionary