[Note: This was intended to be a Youtube video script, but I don’t think I have the will to edit something this massive]
[Note 2: I had to copy this from 1 blog I made onto another, there may be various formatting errors or even a missing part]
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”Oh hey dylan watcha doin’ over there?”
”Ah I’m just writing”
”But wait dude holy shit are you writing Chinese? That’s pretty fucking cool”
”Oh no it’s Japanese, actually”
”aaah but don’t they use Chinese characters tho?”
”Yees? But also no”
”Isn’t there like a character for every word?”
”Sort of but not really?”
”Weren’t they like little drawings of trees or suns n stuff and then they mean those things?”
”I mean I guess but also no..”
”So like all the characters have meanings right?”
Yeeah but they also make sounds sometimes..
”Okaay.. how does it actually work then?”
Well ”work” is an overstatement. It is a huge mess of systems mushed together through bandaid fixes without ever deciding on any cohesive method and instead just throwing everything at the wall that sticks.
And you know what?
It’s fucking beautiful. I love these bastards despite the fact that they are such a pain in the ass to learn. It’s one of the most interesting and beautiful looking writing systems I have ever seen, but man is it hard to explain to other people why they fascinate me so much, or even just how they work in the first place. I’ll be doing the latter.
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How kanji is actually learned in practice
Okay here’s how it works. You see a word wtitten in kanji. Then you look up how it can be read.
You want to write a word? Then you look up in what ways you can write it in Kanji. Yup it’s as simple as that these days.
The more words, characters and context you know, the more easily you can guess how certain words would be read out loud or what they mean. But ultimately, you’ll need to look a word up to be sure. We don’t really live in the day and age where we can just make up new characters on the spot, either.me
If you’re adventurous you can look up what each individual kanji means. Or hey, you could painstakingly try to memorize 1 meaning, 1 common Chinese based reading and 1 common Japanese based reading for each character, but you’ll still be doing a lot of guesswork. As far as I know in Japanese schools, they make you cram the writings of words using certain kanji over and over and over. You write characters over and over on a piece of paper with guideline squares on it. Yup that’s it. You could live your life perfectly fine just knowing this. Just see them as arbitrary squiggly lines that happen to hold meaning. Or you could dive into the rabbit hole of how these characters actually work.
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The 3 main writing systems.
Japanese has a whopping 3 writing systems all used in conjunction, because difficulty level asian. They use
-Kanji,
-Hiragana and
-Katakana,
and sometimes even some roman letters and arabic numbers.
-The main writing system is the granddad called Kanji: thousands of Chinese characters that each represent different meanings. 1 character can represent several meanings, that is separate from the words it is used in. They’re named after the characters used by the Han dynasty in China (漢=Han,字=Character=漢字kanji). We call Kanji a ”logography”. You know, a logo is a simple drawing representing some kinda thing like the apple company logo being an apple, and graphy means writing. While they do represent a meaning, they can also be used to represent sound and you’ll see how later.
As Kanji was too difficult, his now long forgotten daughter manyougana was like yo I’m going to use the same characters, but like only a thousand of them and they’ll represent sounds and people can just pick whatever character they want that fits. This proved to still suck major ass so they went back to the drawing board.
-Manyougana’s 2 children are called ”kana’‘, literally ”temporary name”. The kana were like fuck you mom we’re lazy ass rebels and your hundreds of character methods are too difficult. Us kana are gonna replace you and from now on shit is gonna be simple. So they represent sets of sound kind of like our alphabet but not really because that would make it too easy to explain.
The sisters full name is Hiragana, The brother’s full name is katakana. Hiragana was created by taking small pieces of cursive manyougana. Katakana was made by taking small fragments of block letter manyougana.
Don’t worry about the kana turning into gana thing she’s a bit stubborn.
Hiragana was initially used as an easier alternative to write Japanese, katakana was used for buddhist monks and the like to write notes and shorthand and stuff. Hiragana got to be more casual while Katakana was used in official fancy ass documents.
Both of them represent the same set of like, a 100 and some more possible sounds in the Japanese language so there’s a hiragana character for ”ke” ”け” but there’s also a katakana for ”ke” ”ケ” that looks different but ultimately does the exact same thing. Then people kept using kanji anyways because they make you one of the cool kids I guess and they ended up using all 3 systems at once.
Technically, kana are not alphabets.
See, Japanese has very few sounds total, so it made more sense to usually assign 1 character to a combination of sounds rather than a single one. In English these larger sets of sounds are called syllables (We have way more of them btw), so we call kana ”syllebaries” not alphabets but even that is not accurate because the way Japanese typically divides the sounds in a word is different.
A Japanese word like ”hiragana”, has a certain rhythm. Certain sets of sounds take up the same amount of time to say. hi-ra-ga-na. ”Akarui”’ would be ”a-ka-ru-i” Each of those beats is called a ”mora” in English, and 1 kana represents 1 mora. 1 kana system consists of about 50 basic symbols. The only singular sound characters are the vowels A I U E O and the Consonant N. The rest is a combination between a vowel and a consonant like the row ”ka” ”ki” ”ku” ”ke” ”ko” か き く け こ and ”ma” ”mi” ”mu” ”me” ”mo” ま み む め も. Some of these basic characters can be combined, others can get a marker to make a sound softer or harder and that allows you to write the remaining sounds.
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The usage of the 3 systems
Which systems you can use to write a word with depends on the word itself, and the context. But overall:
-Kanji takes the main role.
-Hiragana the secondary role.
-Katakana the support role and is the third wheel in this relationship nobody cares about.
Sometimes words are used outside of their intended role simply to make the text easier to read, as Japanese has no spaces so words easily blend together if they only use one system.
-Kanji is used for the main words.
-Hiragana is mostly used when something can’t be written in kanji, is hard to write in kanji, they simply don’t want to write it in kanji, or to make words that use the same kanji easier to distinct or read. For example Chinese had completely different grammar so how the hell are you going to represent stuff like ”ed” in ”walked” with Kanji? Well nowadays they just put hiragana after the kanji. 食べる(taberu, to eat) has 1 kanji 食(meaning eat)+ two hiragana べ(be) and る(ru). Grammatical/functional words in general tend to be written in kana to make things easier to read.
-Katakana is used for all the other shit nobody else wants to do. Emphasizing words, official names of companies, animals or plants, western loanwords, certain slang words, words that represent sounds like ”bang”. All 3 can be used for stylistic reasons too, such as using katakana to represent robot or foreigner speech.
Making words easier to distinct happens with something called ”okurigana”送り仮名. So 華やか is written with two kana やか to make it more clear you’re supposed to read it as ”hanayaka” and not something else. Hiragana is also used to make stuff easier to read with something called furigana 振り仮名, tiny little kana above or next to a kanji word to show you how that kanji should be read out loud.
Lastly, there’s a few symbols that were born out of kana, kanji and roman letters, that aren’t actually kana or kanji. This thing for example 々 makes you not have to write a kanji again when its used twice in a row. Not 人人 but 人々. ー in katakana makes a long vowel.ケーキ(keeki). Punctuation marks look different:。Quotes are done in brackets like this: 「昨日は」. They do have ！and？, etc.
You got that? If you didn’t just watch 1 of the bazillion other videos on the subject. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes: How kanji work.
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There are 3 elements to using kanji:
1: How they are written, presented and used. [Presentation and usage]
2: How individual characters are made and structured, regardless
of whether you use it in Japanese or not [Character Structure]
3: How the spoken language its words are represented by kanij. [Word Structure]
We can look at this in two ways.
1:How this was done in Ancient China.
2:How this is done in Japan
How it was done in ancient Chinese forms the basic foundation as to why these characters are used the way they are, while its modern Japanese usage is a convoluted mess because these characters weren’t made with that entirely different language in mind.
Disclaimer: I will be explaining how kanji ideally would have worked for explanation sake, not how they were actually used in practice because obviously I know nothing about Ancient Chinese. I’ll be using Japanese words and made up stuff to explain it.
Ancient Chinese Writing
[1: Presentation]
1 character is written in 1 square block of space. They were typically written from top to bottom, then right to left. There is a certain order and direction in which you draw each stroke, The stroke order which is important to make the characters look readable when writing in cursive and proper calligraphy. It and the ”stroke count”. is also used to look up characters in dictionaries. How the same character looks depends on the region and the script styles they’re using.
Let’s look at ”[2: Character Structure]
Stage 1, the simple stage.
They drew simple crude images with shapes that resembled various objects and things around them, like animals, plants, tools, utensils, people, etc. For example, this thing represented the sun:
This thing is the shell of some kind of sea creature, so let’s call it a ”shellfish”
These images are called ”pictographs”, with ”picto” referring to a ”picture” and ”graph” referring to writing. Our examples are a sun, a tree and a shellfish. Our Sun character represents something right? It is a drawing of something, in this case the sun. We call that the characters ”form”, what the shape of a character represents. These forms can then represent some kind of ‘meaning” through what we associate with said forms, in this case it simply means ”the sun”. But you can use that form to mean all kinds of things. For example they could have drawn the sun to represent warmth or light, something people associate with the sun. Characters can end up having multiple meanings. Like words, what these characters end up meaning depends on how they’re used. For example if I use an X mark on a traffic sign every time someone isn’t allowed to move past a certain place, people will start to associate that symbol with meaning you’re now allowed to do something.
Other times, their characters represented more abstract concepts.
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This character’s form is just a line and another line above it, but it meant ”’above” or ”up”. These are called ideographs, ‘asin writing that represents Ideas. These
Pictographs and Ideographs form the foundation of all Chinese based writing no matter how complicated they get.
Both of these shouldn’t be that weird of a concept. We use pictographs all the time, Emoji for example. The ”Form” of this 🎱 emoji would be that it’s a magic 8 pool ball. But I could use it to mean whatever things I associate with it, maybe it means ”round”. Maybe it means ”8”. Maybe it means ”fortune telling”. The Eggplant emoji 🍆 can be used to mean something dirty even though its form is just food.
The thing is, while Emoji or street signs are a form of communication, they are not a systemic”language”.
In my language, that emoji is called an ”aubergine” while in American English it is called an ”Eggplant”. Those words and languages are entirely separate from the idea that the emoji represents. Anyone who speaks any language could look at the emoji and get something out of it. The same went for ancient Chinese characters. Now imagine if you would use these emoji to actually represent the words in the English language. THAT is what happened with Chinese writing.
[3: Word Structure].
Stage 1:
In Ancient Chinese, most words were very short. They only consisted of 1 syllable, syllables being how people divide the sounds of words into little different chunks like ”ready” having ”rea” and ”dy”. Having 1 syllable wasn’t too confusing I imagine because certain words likely had different tones. I’m going to guess each word could likely be written down with whatever existing pictographs had something to do with that word. I may want to write down the word fish, so I use a drawing of a fish 魚。I may want to write down the word for ”money’‘. Well, shells were used as a currency in ancient china, so I use the shell from above which these days looks like this: 貝. But hey, maybe shellfish could be used for some other words and syllables as well, I dunno. Maybe other people use them in different ways, but eventually 1 method usually becomes standard.
If a character that would accurately represent that word doesn’t exist, like not having anything that could represent a shark, you can always just make up a new one. 1 character per word (though sometimes the same character for a different word) means you get a fuckton of new characters often with unique drawings. But the basic gist of it is that each word got 1 chinese character. It was simple. Let’s say 鉛 this thing means their word for the material ”lead” which sounds like lets say ”en”. 筆 this thing means writing brush and sounds like lets say ”pi”. As time goes on, I will start to associate the meaning of these words with the characters because that’s how I constantly see them used. I will also start associating the sounds with these characters.
Stage 2: Getting more complicated.
As time went on characters were used in more complicated ways, like Character Compounds and Sound Loans.
As the amount of words increased and sounds changed over time, 1 syllable probably got a bit confusing and limited. Whatever may be the case, instead of coming up with an entirely new sound for a new word most of the time, why not just take let’s say two old words and combine them into a new one? What should I call this block of ice? Well ehm it’s made of ice and it’s shaped like a block. Those are standout characteristics. So let’s call it ”Ice Block”. Boom, we’ve made a compound word out of old words we know.
As time went on, they moved from 1 syllable words to making new words by combining two parts that had meaning. It would make sense then, to also just..combine the characters those word use! make Character Compounds! If the word now consists of two older words..Just use two kanji in a row for each word, one for ”ice” one for ”cream”.
The smallest part of a word in a language with meaning is called a ”morpheme” by us nerds. ”Ice” would be one morpheme, ”Cream” another. ”Dogs” would have the morpheme ”dog” and another morpheme ”s”. ”S” can not be used as a word on its own, but it does have meaning, that there’s multiple of something. In compound words, 1 Morpheme and 1 Syllable would get 1 Kanji character. 鉛筆(pencil) has 鉛(lead) and 筆(writing brush), which were initially seperate words. 鉛筆 is 1 compound word consisting of 2 syllables and 2 morphemes, represented by 2 kanji. This is the foundation of kanji in Japanese writing to this day. 電車(densha, train), 電(electricity)+車(Vehicle). 社内(shanai, inside of a company) 社(Company)+内(inside). This is why no, there is not a new character for every single word. Modern Chinese and Japanese has moved to preffering to use 2 existing kanji for words rather than make up new ones.
When they didn’t really want to make a new character to represent a specific word, they sometimes used Sound loans. For example 自 was a picture of a nose. Someone wanted to write the word ”self” which had the same pronunciation that character usually did. So, they just used 自 to mean ”self”. If I write water with 水 and ”aqua” with水 because it means the same thing, I will associate that character with the sounds ”water” and ”aqua”. Because of this, characters can also end up being used to represent a sound, not meaning. Imagine if I’d want to write ”catastrophe” in emoji, but I did not have a part to represent ”cat”? well, I could just use a 🐱 emoji anyways because people associate it with the sound ”cat”. You know, like a rebus.
So to recap
1 regular word with 1 syllable and 1 morpheme is represented by 1 character.
1 Compound word with 2 syllables and 2 morphemes is represented by 2 Characters.
Words for which they didn’t make new characters took old characters that made a similar sound.
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Later Characters: Stage 3.
How individual characters are made and structured. [Character Structure].
Remember how people started to create new words using combinations of old ones because it was easier? Well, Kanji is similar. New ways of creating individual characters came about, giving us a total of 6 ways if we include pictographs and ideographs. Most characters would end up consisting of multiple parts called components. Our character for ”lead” 鉛 has 金 (copper) and 㕣(A marsh at the foot of some hills). Just like with words like ”dogs” where the ”s” part is not a word of its own, some of these components can’t be used on their own, while most components were initially their own characters. You may notice both characters look smaller as components. As each character has to fit within 1 square, they often needed to shrink down these components, put them at a certain spot and change the shape a bit to make sure they fit.
There are 5 elements to Character structure and Composition.
1: We have: The 6 character creation types
2: The roles components used inside of a character can have.
3: The positions components can take inside of a character.
4: Historical changes components go through.
5: Historical changes characters go through.
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Character Structures
The 6 types of character creation determines how the character came to be in the first place.
1: Pictographs, drawings/pictures of things.
2: Ideographs, drawings of abstract ideas. Taking other characters and adding distinguishing marks like lines and boxes to emphasize a new meaning, or taking 1 character and reversing or flipping it to represent a new meaning also count as ideographs.
3: Sound loans. Like how they wanted to write ”self” so they just took 自(a nose) which they associated with the same sound, used it as ”self” and called it a day. Typically these aren’t seen as new characters.
3: Ideogrammic Compounds. When you combine two pictographs or ideographs into a new meaning. Like the character for ”rest”: 休 has a person 亻(A smaller version of人) leaning against a tree 木.
4: Phono-Semantic Compounds, literally ”sound-meaning combinations”. Here one component has something to do with the meaning of a character, the other with the sound. 鉛 for example has 金(copper), referring to the material lead. 㕣 has no meaning here, it is just used because they associate it with the Chinese based sound ”en” and 鉛 should be read ”en”. Contrary to what you may think: The overwhelming majority of characters work like this. Some of these also have sound components that express a meaning as well, but that isn’t as common as simply using a component for sound.
6: There is a last type called ”Derivative Characters” but it’s vaguely defined and useless.
Disclaimer: The meanings and readings of characters change over time. As most of these compositions were made in ancient china, they often don’t make sense anymore, especially in Japanese. Original meanings of characters become archaic, components get replaced by others, and sound components may hint at readings that simply aren’t used anymore. Any guess as to what each component means is just that, a theory based on what old characters they found on old objects and what patterns they saw. Many characters have several theories, though some of them are more like cultural myths rather than linguistics.
Component Roles
As you can tell, certain components have different roles within a specific Kanji. The same component can be used as a different role in a different kanji, but some components are more prone to being used as a certain role than others. There are 4 roles.
-Form Component: Used for what the kanji is a picture of or its shape.
-Meaning Component: Used for one of the meaning associated with the component. 忙(busy)s 忄is a heart, which is used in kanji that have something to do with emotion. The same few meaning components tend to be used over and over.
-Sound Component: Used for one of the almost always Chinese based sounds associated with the component. 忙 its 亡 is simply used to hint at one of the characters reading ”Bou”. Sound components tend to be more obscure kanji and there’s way more of them. Some aren’t used as individual characters anymore.
-Empty Component: When the component gives you no useful information at all. It’s essentially useless. 挙(wide) its top component is actually short for another component, and as a result, it doesn’t help you pronounce the character in any way shape or form. The original was 擧.
Also relevant is a ”radical”, a way to categorize kanji in dictionaries. Each kanji gets 1 main ”radical” usually the current meaning component, and is categorized under that one.
An increase and decrease of characters
Due to these combinations, less new pictographs had to be created. But, due to the introduction of sound components, there seem to exist a lot of kanji that essentially mean the same thing but just have a different sound component. It’d be like If I’d use the character for water on 水 the word ”water” but added a different sound component to represent ”aqua” instead. Often these synonims end up getting different nuances in meaning. This might not be an historically accurate example but 煌 燿 can both be used to represent ”kagayaku”(to shine) in Japanese in different nuances. 煌 now means twinkle or glitter and uses 火(fire) plus 皇 thing to make the reading ”kou”. 燿 now means ”to shine”, and the thing on the side is used for the reading ”you”.
Component Positions
Each component needs to be able to fit inside of 1 square. So they often change shape and get shortened to fit. 木(tree) looks like 林 in ”forest” . Heart 心 usually looks like 忄 when used on the left side. As you may be able to tell, each component fits in a certain position. Some components tend to be used in the same position, but they can take several. Here’s all the positions they can be in:
When typing, they are represented by little boxes made out of lined dots, and after they put the components that were used. For example: 回=⿴囗口.| 望=⿱⿰亡月王.
Each type of component position has a name. The main positions are
-Left 偏(hen, partial). 扌 in 投.
-Right 旁(Tsukuri, side) 喿 in 燥.
-Top 冠(kanmuri, Crown) ム in 台..
-Bottom: 脚(ashi, leg) 口 in 台.
The remaining positions are a bit strange.
– Box enclosure 構(kamae, structure). 囗 in 国。|匚 in 区. |門 in 聞 , etc.
-Hang/Drop (垂, hang/drop). 疒 in 病| 尸 in 屋.
-Partial Enclosure. 繞(nyou, surround, enclose) ⻌ in 遠,| 廴in 延,| 走 in 越
Old obsolete findings of characters are called ”historical forms”. What is and isn’t the same kanji does NOT depend on what it looks like, it depends on which shapes share the same history and which are similar enough in usage.
People write characters in their own ways. Eventually people of a certain region will start to follow the same standard in how they write a certain character, when writing in a certain script style. People also always try to make characters easier to write because they’re lazy and kanji are fucking difficult.
Changes can:
1: Replace an old look entirely because people stop using the old one.
2: Become a variant, alternate way to write the same thing if enough people keep using a different way.
3: Be specific to a certain style or context, like writing in cursive.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but my personal theory is that characters always go through a process of change in order to:
1: Make Characters easier to write [Simplification]
2: Make components more uniform/standardized/regular so they
didn’t have to write a billion unique shapes and instead all characters are made up of like the same 500 recognizable shapes. [Standerdization]
3: Make different Characters Easier to distinct. [Marks and Additions]
Take the character for tree:
The process can happen on three levels:
1: The component changes across most characters. 食 as a component used to look like 館 but is something like 館 in common characters.
2: The component changes or has gotten alternate ways to write it, usually used in certain contexts. 肉(meat) used in body parts looks like 月 when used as a component on the left nowadays. 腕(arm) 膝(knee).臓(heart).
3: The component only changes inside of 1 or a few specific kanji. The thing on the right of 別 is actually supposed to be the component 骨. I have never seen it look like that in another kanji.
In all cases, This process didn’t always go smoothly. Often you end up with a character where the shapes you see now do not give you any hint as to how to read it or what it means. 別 is an example of that. This is called ”corruption”, when 1 component changes so much it stops being able to serve its actual purpose.
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I’ve pulled several categories out of my ass as to ways these characters can change over time:
-Ways pictographs become abstract shapes:
[Abstracted into unique shape]
Simply make a pictograph more abstract until it is easier to write and doesn’t look like what it was supposed to be. Take 角(corner), which used to be the horn of an animal, and now looks like角. Sometimes instead of one abstraction replacing all old ones, the exact same component gets abstracted into a few possible set different ways in different characters. Sometimes multiple different drawings of the same concept like lets say a foot exist, but will get abstracted in different ways. 止 was a foot pointing upwards,夂 was also a foot. But they came to be entirely different characters, with 止 meaning ”stop”, and 夂 only being used as a component.
[Abstracted into regular shape] Take a pictograph, and turn it into similar recognizable shapes from other characters so you likely don’t need to learn new shapes to write it.
四 was a pictograph of something breathing out, presumably a nose or mouth, and was sound loaned to mean 4. Now it looks like it has a 囗box(often representing borders) + 儿, the legs of a human, but those meanings have nothing to do with the character.
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-Changes in presentation:
[Position change] Sometimes the position of a component simply changes. 島 has these alternate forms 㠀, , 嶋 , 嶌 , changing the 山
[Direction Change]
馬 was a horse from its side, but the shape actually turned around in direction over time.
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-Types of corruptions:
[Unique Shape corruption] When the shape of an otherwise standardized component changes into something unique it’s not supposed to be making it unrecognizable, usually in ways that are not repeated in any other kanji. I’ll count the 別 bone thing on the left. 賓 has a corruption of a person in the middle that never appears elsewhere.衆 , is a simplification of 眾.(the bottom is simply three people人/亻).
[Fusion]. When two different characters fuse together into a new shape even though they’re not meant to be a new shape. 善 is actually 言+言+羊 mushed together.
[Other Regular Shape Replacement]. When it initially had an already standardized component but got replaced by another that doesn’t actually make sense. 広 its sound component at the bottom used to be 廣. 旧 used to look like 舊. Yup.
Sound components tend to get more obscure over time, so they’re prone to changing. 家, read ”ka” has this sound component 豕 that isn’t read ka, but that is because it is actually short for this character not used in Japanese 豭. 経 (read kei) its 圣(holy) component is not read kei, but is actually a replacement of 巠 which is read kei. These replacements make it seem like it is supposed to be 1 component but is actually another.
[Joker Components] Remember card games where the joker would stand in for anything you’d want to play? It’s kinda like that. 龶is an empty component shape used by several kanji, but in each kanji, it actually replaces a different component. 龶 has no meaning of its own
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Simplifications that tend to happen later in a characters lifespan:
[Abbreviation] When a component or part is simply just taken away. 蟲 (Insect) used to have 3 snakes but now only has 1 : 虫. 糸(thread) used to look like two threads: 絲.
[True Simplification/Shorthand] When a complicated shape is turned into a unique/non standard but similar shape that is easier to draw. Take 両, the part in the middle means nothing and is actually 兩. This often causes it to components unique to a kanji with no meaning. 実 bottom is just a simplified shape of 貫. 図 is just a simplified shape of 圖. The weird thing in 逓 is actually tiger 虒.
[Replacement] When a component is replaced by an already existing other component that is simpler, but still expresses the kanji’s meaning or sound in some way.
[Phonetician] When a meaning/form component is replaced by a sound component.
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Ways components get added:
[Component Addition] When a component is added, usually to clarify its meaning or reading and make it stand apart from now similar kanji. Sometimes a character’s meaning changes, and a component is added to make a new character with that character’s original meaning. Take 冬, which had a meaning of ”end”, but now means winter. So 糸（thread) was added and we now have 終, which means end. These characters then start living their own seperate lives.
[Decorative Mark] A type of addition. When some kind of simple marking is added to make it look different or nicer. The right of: 幻
[Distinction mark] When a simple mark like a dot or box is added just to distinct it from another character with a similar meaning. 含 is just 今 with the 口 mark. 言 used to be 舌 with a mark.
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Ways new characters and components tend to be born:
[Addition] But we’ve already discussed that.
[Reversion] 今 is said to be have started as a reverse 曰く, 后 started as a reversed 司, but then became their own separate things.
[Distinguishing Marks] Just add a mark to another character like a line or box.
[Duplication] 林(forest) is just two trees.
[Tripplification] 品 is just three boxes口.
[Merging] Some components or variants share a certain history, but split off into being their own separate characters.阜Hill its left position looks like: 阝. But 邑 its right position looks like: 阝. Yup, they look the same now. 月 was abbreviated to: 肉(meat)
[Splitting] The opposite of merging. When two characters initially share the same history, but one changed version actually starts to have its own meanings, usages and sounds separate from the other.
Congrats! You know actually know how components work. But you have no clue how the they’re actually used to write Japanese.
[2: Word Structure]
The structure of words in old Chinese was pretty simple. 1 Character, 1 word, 1 syllable, 1 morpheme. 1 Compound words, 2 characters, 2 morphemes. Japanese however was an entirely different language, so it’s not nearly as simple. They had to use these same Chinese characters to represent the words in their own language even though Japan had no writing system for so long. As a result, the difference between compound words (複合語fukugougo) and compound characters (熟語Jukugo, though that also has different meanings) in Japanese is much more pronounced.
Japanese mainly has words that came from these different places:
-Words they loaned in 3 different time periods/places from Chinese Languages.
-Chinese parts of word Japan combined to make their own new Chinese words
-The words that they already had in their own language before China came along, mainly from the yamato clan but potentially also from other Japonic languages like ryuukyuan and Ainu for all I know.
-Words loaned from Sanskrit(梵語, bongo), mostly due to buddhism being practiced in Japan.
-Loanwords from western countriesケーキ(keeki=cake), as well as self made western words（サラリーマン, sarariiman=salary+man=salary man, a word that didn’t actually exist in English).
As some different words are represented by the same Kanji, sometimes words from different origins look the same, but are simply read differently. 黒煙 (black smoke) Could be the Chinese based ”kokuen” but also the Native based ”Kurokemuri”. Sometimes people misreading stuff enough actually makes them become new words. Anyways,
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Let’s start with Chinese loanwords and words based on Chinese.
Problem 1: First of all, the usually 1 syllable per character thing got ruined because of converting the words to the Japanese sound system. 鉛筆 became ”enpitsu”. Tones of the words were lost and Japanese has few sounds so a lot of the readings ended up sounding the same.
Problem 2: By the time they started borrowing words from Chinese, most of those words were Chinese compound words. They often borrowed the entire word, not whatever words it consisted of, and wrote it with 2 kanji just like the Chinese. The problem is, that means that while usually in Chinese each part (unless a suffix or affix) could be used as its own unique word, like in 鉛筆 ”鉛” was a word in Chinese at some point, and so is 筆. In Japanese however, just saying ”en” would give you confused looks, it is not its own word. Neither is ”pitsu” or ”hitsu”. Major exceptions for this exist of course, like 量 being a Japanese word. Or how certain set phrases and ”suru verbs” like 愛する(literally love do=to love) actually use single kanji Chinese based words.
Problem 3: New sound changes made to make a word easier to pronounce alter otherwise consistent readings. 学校(school): Gaku+kou gets pronounced as ”gakkou” for example, called Gemination. Another type of sound change called rendaku happens in other kinds of words.
Then, Japan started to mix up these kanji/parts of Chinese words themselves. For example 電話(den-wa, electric talk) is how they made and represented their word for ”phone”. These ”self made Chinese” words are sometimes then loaned back into Chinese, coming full circle. They’re called 和製漢語(Waseikango, japan-made-han-language)
For these two categories, each morpheme is represented by 1 kanji. Occasionally there’s multiple ways to write these words with different nuances. As they came from Chinese, it can be hard to see when they are separate words or not.
The way the kanji combine to hint at the meaning of the word differs per word and can happen in these 5 main types:
1: Similar+Similar. Take 2 kanji with a similar meaning. 救助 means to rescue, and has 救 to help/rescue, and 助 to help.
2: Opposite+opposite. let’s say we have a character for cold 寒 and for warmth 暖. What If I want to refer to both warm and cold things with one word? You could combine these two opposite kanji into 寒暖 . Sometimes these opposite pairs may mean that both the kanjis meanings and everything in between will apply to the word. Sometimes it’s just the two meanings of the kanji. Sometimes it refers to an entirely new, general concept like maybe it could have meant ”temperature” instead.
3: Descriptive+Main word.
Let’s say I want to talk about meat and we have a kanji for that 肉. But I want a word where it specifies what kind of meat it is, beef. Well, just put cow in front of it, which will describe some characteristic of the meat, and then what it actually is, meat. 牛肉. Boom, Cow+meat. There’s also a category of words that put a negative word in front of another word, which you may count seperately. Such as 非常 being not+constant, meaning something unusual. The first character negates the meaning of the second.
4: State/action + Actor/Object (aka Precedent – Subject).
読書. Read (action state) + 書 book/writing (object) = reading. It looks like ”to read writing’, basically. The precedent first, then the subject, like in English. In Japanese you’d say it in reverse. 書を読む
5: Actor/Object + State/action. (aka subject – precedent). The opposite of the last one. This fits Japanse more, first the subject, then the precedent. 腹痛. Stomach + pain. Stomach (actor/object) is in the state/action of pain:痛. 腹が痛い.
6: Sound+Sound completely disregarding meaning exists too, but usually isn’t mentioned because these words still come from china so how would they know it was one of these?
Outside of Chinese based words I’ve seen some different kinds of combinations, like a sequence of things. The compound verb 跳ね返る (hanekaeru) (haneru)Jump/spring + Kaeru(teturn) means to bounce back. To me it feels like first something jumps up, and then it bounces back. The compound forms a clear sequence, but that’s a personal interpretation.
Structure of larger jukugo.
Sometimes suffixes or affixes are added to whatever size of word, including in old Chinese. Typically when Jukugo are larger, they will combine two jukugo into a 四字熟語 in a similar manner. (4 character jukugo, though that term is associated with idioms). Others just stack a buncha words together.
業界標準 (gyoukai hyoujun), meaning industry-wide standard can be broken down into 2 jukguo, 業界(gyoukai, business world) and 標準(hyoujun, standards). You can then add the suffix 化, which means to turn something into something else, to make the word 業界標準化(gyoukaihyoujunka): ”industry standardization”. Typically people break words down with the largest parts with meaning they can find, not individual characters.
Note that the term Jukugo 熟語 is most associated with these chinese based words, not native ones.
Simplifications:
After the reform in world war 2 they attempted to make kanji easier to read and restricted official documents to about 2200 characters. As a result, various words had their characters replaced by different ones, or even removed altogether and replaced by hiragana.
These two issues happened:
-Mixed Writings (mazegaki). When the less common kanji gets replaced by hiragana. 改竄 becomes 改ざん.
-Writing Change (Kakikae). When the difficult kanji is replaced by a simpler one. 抽籤: Lottery (Pull+lot) becomes 抽選 (Pull+Select)
Not only does it mess with how clear the origin of the word is, it can make it harder to see where words begin and end as Japanese has no spaces.
Kanji in Native and other words
Native words drop the 1 syllable thing entirely, but tend to follow the ”a compound words morphemes each get 1 kanji” rule, UNLESS there was a single character that would fit the word more. Other times they completely disregarded the whole morpheme thing. Stuff that can’t be represented in kanji or stuff that makes it easier to distinct words using the same kanji gets written in kana.
-1 kanji representing 1 morpheme.
Uchigawa (inside): 内(Uchi, inside)+側(kawa, side)=内側
Kurokemori (black smoke). 黒(Kuro, black)+煙(Kemuri, smoke) = 黒煙
Tobikomu (to dive/jump into) = 飛(tobi, to fly)+込(Komu, into=飛び込む(to jump into)
-1 Kanji representing 2 or more morphemes
Sometimes 1 single character fit the meaning of a compound word or they simply wrote it the way china wrote it and called it a day. 湖 (mizuumi, lake) should technically be written as 水(mizu, water)+海(Umi, Sea) but instead they went for 湖 because that means lake and that’s probably how china wrote it anyways. 試みる(kokoromiru, to try) should actually be 心+見. This mostly happened with old, basic words that existed long before kanji was introduced. Modern words tend to use the 1 kanji per morpheme rule.
-2 Kanji representing 1 morpheme.
Sometimes they wrote a Japanese word the way China wrote it, and china wrote it with 2 characters because it was a compound word in Chinese. But then the Japanese word actually only had 1 morpheme. Take ”otona” which means ”Adult”. China at the time probably wrote it like 大人. So that’s how japan wrote it too. Normally you can break the kanji compound down into two different readings. Here..You can’t. 大 is not oto, or na, or o. Otona is 大人. Other times people could simply not be arsed to pick 2 kanji that had something to do with the readings or origins of the word at all. They just randomly picked 2 characters that had something to do with that words meaning, and you ended up with the same result.
-The we don’t give a fuck category.
Sometimes while writing they had no clue which kanji to pick, so they just ignored readings and word origins or whatever, and just picked a kanji that had something to do with the word they wanted to write that made sense in context, to be able to write it anyways. This is called ”ateji” 当て字(target character). There are two types of ateji, meaning and sound.
-Meaning ateji take 2 or more characters that have something to do with the word, but completely disregard the reading. This usually happens for Names of people and places, adverbs, grammatical/functional words, Sanskrit loanwords and western loanwords. Take the loanword 煙草(tabako), which is written as 煙 smoke+草grass.
-Sound ateji characters will use characters that are vaguely associated with that sound, often shortening or altering certain readings if they have to. Ofuro (bath) お風呂 is written with wind and spine just because of the readings fuu and ro associated with those characters.
Most ateji, especially sound ones have been getting replaced by kana.
Alternate writings
Often they had multiple options when it came to representing a Japanese word. Most options aren’t used or have gotten archaic. ”To see” was ”miru”. These kanji all had to do with sight, and are still all used to represent miru, while some other kanji that represented sight aren’t really used anymore: 見看観診視. You’re allowed to use all of them, but they tend to have different characteristics and nuances. Many are unoficial (外) and either weren’t used much or mostly fell out of use.
1: The main, broad way you write that word
2: Alternate nuances for that word which may or may not have nothing to do with meanings of the original word.
3:Specific meanings for that word you have to write in that specific kanji.
I repeat: some are interchangeable but just change feel/nuance, others have to be used in specific ways.
見 is the main normal one usually used.
診 is used in the context of being ”looked at”, aka examined/inspected by a doctor.
看 has a nuance of watching over/looking after someone, like someone who’s sick.
Occasionally, these alternate forms their meanings become so set in stone, that people forget that they’re actually used to represent the same verb.
引く”Hiku” means to pull, but this form of Hiku: 轢く means to drive over someone. This is just a different meaning of the same word, but a lot of people are under the false impression that 轢く is an entirely separate word that happens to sound the same.
Often obscure kanji have kunyomi of common words, and are rarely used to write that word, but can be, usually for stylistic reasons.
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Meanings.
Individual Kanji have their own meanings. Usually there is 1 archaic original meaning that isn’t used anymore, as well as a broad common current meaning. 1 Character can have many meanings that are all derived from one another or came from things like sound loans. These meanings come into existence due to the way these characters are used and used in words, just like how words tend to have a long history of different meanings. Often any given word will use 1 particular meaning of a character, so sometimes you may think a compound word makes no sense, but it might just use a meaning of the character you are unfamiliar with. These meanings are separate from the actual readings of the character. There’s often more meanings for a character than there are readings, but sometimes specific readings hold a specific meaning for that character.
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Readings.
How do you read them out loud? The reading of a kanji depends on which word the kanji is representing, what language that word has its origins in, and whether the word has had sound changes over time.
Chinese based words and self based Chinese words use what are called Onyomi (Chinese sound readings). Native/japonic words, usually ”yamatokotoba” from the yamato clan that once dominated Japan, use kunyomi (japanese explanation readings). Western loanwords use ”gairaigo” readings and these have basically become obsolete due to kana.
The main reading types are
-Onyomi, the Chinese sound based readings, of which there are 4 types.
-Kunyomi, the native readings.
-Gairaigo (archaic), the western based readings.
Japan did not loan Chinese words and readings in one go. It happened from different places in China in different times.
There are 4 types of onyomi based on different Chinese dynasties:
Gouon呉音: The earliest ones.
-Kanon漢音. The most common and typical ones.
-Touon唐音. The newest and most uncommon ones. These sound very different from the other two.
-Kanyouon慣用音(custom use sound), these are wrong readings that ultimately became standard.
Regular Kunyomi , the native readings, aren’t divided into types. But I would like to note a few things. First off, there’s quite a limited amount of kunyomi. Most kunyomi can be represented by many different kanji for different nuances related to that kanji’s meaning, but people tend to only pick 1 or a few. they are prone to a sound change thing called ”rendaku” 連濁(connection impurity). Hito(person)+hito does not become hitohito, but, ”hitobito”人々. It happens to compound words and makes the first sound in the second word hardened or softened. The hardened type happens to H sounds in onyomi words like Ketsu+haku = keppaku: 潔白. The other type tends to happen in kunyomi words. I’d also like to note that many kanji have unofficial kunyomi表外訓読み that have mostly fallen out of use. Not every meaning within a kanji’s definition gets a kunyomi, so one of its meanings might not be represented by a kunyomi at all. Some characters do not even have kunyomi. Many kunyomi are used accross a wide range of characters, while some are only used in one or a few.
Gairaigo readings practically don’t exist anymore. But there’s practically unused kanji like 糎 that can be read (senchimeetoru, centimeter). Nowadays they just use kana.
There’s several more specific ways these onyomi and kunyomi readings can be used inside of a word.
-Mixed readings. Words that use both onyomi and kunyomi.
-Special Readings: Readings specific to that word or irregular readings.
-Name readings,
Plus of course readings can be altered by sound changes.
For mixed readings:
There’s two names depending on the order both named after a major example. For onyomi to kunyomi there is: 重箱読み(juubakoyomi). For kunyomi to onyomi we have: 湯桶(yuutou). Example of the first: 金色. Example of the latter: 場所 (place, basho).
-For special readings there’s two types.
Jukujikun 熟字訓 are compound kun readings, where usually a words kanji were chosen purely for meaning disregarding everything else. In 大人 (otona = big + person) 1 specific reading applies to two characters, not just a single one, and can’t be broken down into two parts. Other examples would be 今日 (kyou, today- now+sun/day), which used to have two morphemes but became one sound due to sound changes. 下手 (Heta, Down+hand=unskilled).
Gikun義訓, another type of kunyomi, refer to readings that aren’t standard or official and are usually made up on the spot and understandable due to the context of that specific piece of writing. Like if you’d use the kanji for cold, 寒 to write winter instead冬. Usually furigana are put after these kanji to make you know what word is actually being written.
As for nanori, often sound ateji for various kun and onyomi are used, other times readings are ignored , but there are specific acceptable readings only present in names.
3: [Presentation and Usage]
Styles, fonts, reforms, etc
Presentation
Traditionally Japanese kanji were written with a brush, giving that round look in the lines. Now it’s usually a pen or pencil on some regular paper. There’s two directions depending on context. 横書き(yokogaki, horizontal writing) is the default these days which is written from left to right, top to bottom based on how we write in the west. Traditionally though, they wrote 縦書き(tategaki, vertical writing) which was written from top to bottom, right to left. This is used in various traditional and artsy things like religious texts, novels and manga.
The same exact kanji can look different depending on the way it is presented. You have various writing styles and scripts that can cause this.
Archaic scripts are used in the ”historical forms” thing from earlier, which I won’t cover, but the most major ones of those are the Oracle Bones script, the Bronze script, Seal Script and the Clerical Script. But anyways we have
-Fonts/Typefaces,
-Handwriting vs printing/PC Characters.
-Specific styles like Cursive.
-Regional Styles
-Colloquial Styles
-Reforms.
Fonts:Just like you have comic sans in English, kanji look different depending on the font. Most of them are based on these Chinese fonts: Imitation Song, Ming, Sans-serif
Handwriting looks more skewed and some characters actually have different standards. 備 looks like
in handwriting. This is ironic because 良 and 艮’s only difference is a dot yet those are completely different characters.
There’s specific styles like the flat brush style for calligraphy, or Cursive and Semi-cursive which connect various lines together, used for quick writing. Full on Cursive fell out of use and is illegible to the overwhelming majority of modern people.
Styles differ per region too. This has had effect in which variants have become standard even in standard writing in different countries. I could type the exact same character, but depending on which language my computer is set to it will show up differently:
There’s colloquial styles.
Abbreviated characters are called Ryakuji 略字. I’ve only seen one still be used but here they are:
Last but not least, there have been official reforms that attempted to make it easier for people to learn to read kanji. Japan had one around after the world war, and later Chinese had its own one which works differently.
Japan settled on the 常用漢字”jouyou kanji” (daily use kanji) list, around 2000 characters that you’re allowed to use in official documents. They also dictated which kunyomi readings and spellings were allowed. Plus they made simplifications for about 300 characters, but the simplifications do not extend to characters outside of the jouyou kanji. The old characters are called 旧字体(kyuujitai, old character style) and the new characters are called 新字体(shinjitai, new style). Only a handful of kyuujitiai characters like 學(now 学, to study) are still used, and in very specific contexts. There exist ”extended shinjitai” characters that have simplifications outside of the jouyou kanji. Anyways onto an example. 廣 looks like 広 in Japanese, but in simplified Chinese it is just 广. In china the simplifications of components extend to all characters btw, like見= 见.
Do not take the jouyou kanji name too literally. It is also based on what characters were useful for the government or culturally/historically important. As a result, some very uncommon characters like 璽(emperors pearl) are on the jouyou kanji list, but common characters like 嘘(lie) aren’t.
Modern Kanji Usage
Despite the difficulty, the benefits of keeping kanji are:
-Being able to read old texts
-Words looking more distinct from one another
-Making new words more easily
-Being able to understand new words more easily
-Being able to understand the etymology of words more easily
-Being able to tell apart similar words more easily.
-Adding nuances to writing that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
-Saving space, you don’t need to write as many characters to write the same amount of information.
Keep in mind, Japan has a fuckton of words that sound the same so it’d be more beneficial to it than let’s say English
Note that the usage of words in Kanji between china and Japan are entirely different. Hand+Paper – 手紙(a letter) in Japanese. In Chinese it means toilet paper.
The same words their meanings have sometimes grown apart. Certain kanji aren’t common in Japan but are very common in China, some kanji common in China aren’t even used in Japanese, and Japan even made a few of their own characters called 国字(kokuji). Individual meanings between kanji have developed separately and are sometimes different. That said, it is easier for a Chinese person to glance at a Japanese text and guess what it is about than the other way around. Readings tend to be completely different unless it is a loanword read by a dialect close to the middle Chinese languages Japanese took from. I’d also say you need less characters, but more readings to comfortably read Japanese compared to Chinese.
Multiple kanji can be used to represent the same word, but they usually settle onto 1 being most common.
Japanese has moved to using a smaller set of the same, more broad kanji to represent words. They have been replacing specific kanji with broader ones, and difficult kanji with kana, resulting in about 1000 essential kanji total that are used practically everywhere, but about 2000 kanji used in daily life. Most people can write words that use these kanji, and recognize and know meanings of individual characters, but they likely can’t tell you what is and isn’t a kunyomi or onyomi.
The total count of relatively common kanji is closer to 3000 to 3500, most used in more specific words and situations.
There’s a lot of them most people simply recognize from words they know, but wouldn’t be able to tell you what they mean in isolation. Many common words that were written with less common kanji, are not not written with kanji at all. Anything beyond this 3500 number gets obscure. The hardest kanji kentei exam level for natives lists about 6300 kanji. A lot of the time when I show the lesser used third of them to native speakers they give me weird looks. But the largest Chinese dictionary lists about 85 thousand characters if you include variants. Yup.
Common Kanji:
-There’s a certain set of very common, broad kanjis used everywhere, and often there’s some less common alternate ones for them. Having 2 common kanji for the same thing isn’t rare, though usually their origins and range of meanings differ quite a bit.
A subset of these like 魚, 耳, 木, 大,金, etc are absolutely fundamental and you won’t see a text without them.
-Many multi kanji words will use 1 kanji that is very common and the other that is pretty common. A lot of the times these are used in Chinese based words that combine 2 kanji with similar meanings like 救助.(rescue = help/save+help in general). 助 is more general and common as 助ける(tasukeru, to help) but 救ける(tasukeru, to help/save) is a close second place.
-Many single kanji words including nouns will have 1 common kanji it is usually written with, but other less common kanji you could write the word with that have a different nuance, more complicated versions, or uncommon ways to write it that have fallen out of use but may still be common in other words.
Less common and obscure kanji:
-Kanji used inside of more fancy and old words, such as the words in novels. Usually they have more specific meanings that can potentially be useful in many different kinds of words, and are only common to people who read that kind of stuff. 贅 means luxury for example, something that doesn’t exist within the basic set of kanji.
-Kanji used in 1 or two common words, but rarely ever used outside of that word. 贅沢(zeitaku, luxury), that 贅 isn’t used in many words, but is kind of common because zeitaku is common. 黎(dark) is only really common due to the words 黎明 and 黎明期 (dawning of an era).
-A lot of lesser known kanji are older cultural objects and specific things made in an era where they still proffered to make new kanji for a new concept. Like traditional clothing, various tools, etc. 裳 an ancient kind of skirt, 褥 an ancient type of cushion, 蓑 a straw raincoat, 鋤 a type of plow. They’re hard to learn and their usage is very limited.
-Animal and Plant kanji are so specific, difficult and irregular they have mostly been replaced by kana save for some very well known ones. Singular animal and plant kanji have a fuckton of them, and compounds rarely make any sense both meaning and sound wise, use obscure kanji, and have many different alternate forms. Look at all the ways to write ”hototogisu”. The left of every [] is 1 example, though a few are different words
-Other Kanji that mean the same thing but with a different onyomi and sound component.
強 and 勁, nuance aside both mean ”strong”, but one is typically read ”kyou” and the other ”kei”, so aside from nuance for native words, they’re used in different onyomi compounds.
-Kanji used in specific fields like construction work or medicine. Stuff like specific body parts, also very specific and limited in use. 膵 means pancreas for example.
-Alternate versions of the same kanji that fell out of use, such as kyuujitai.
-Kanji used only in words that are obscure to begin with.
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I think that about covers everything up you’d need to know as to how these things work. Instead of clearing things up I probably only made you more confused, but hey, that’s one of the reasons I like these things. It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle that never ends.
GaijinJapaneseJourney 