Language - Part III

Jump to:

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Kanji
• Romaji

Kanji

The oldest style of writing. Brought into Japan by Buddist monks, these are Chinese characters, and considered to be the hardest to learn by most Japanese children. There are 5000 to 10000 of these in everyday life in Japan. Most Japanese newspapers are written entirely in Kanji, so mostly the older generation would be able to read them fluently, whereas their children might not as yet. People can use them in names also to give out more meaning.

While the other three character sets represent the sounds that words make, kanji instead mean 'ideas'. There are many ways interpret each kanji, so they don't all just have one meaning. As most Japanese children would be used to reading katakana and hiragana daily, and thus what the words sound like, kanji would complicate things by not giving any clue as to the sound it makes.

In childrens books (and indeed manga from what I've read), kanji sometimes has hiragana beside it to guide them as to the sound it makes, these smaller characters are called furigana. In the example on the right, the kanji says 'Recca' (which is the name of a character), and the furigana says 'baka'. Although giving the pronounciation of the kanji, the word baka also means 'idiot' or 'stupid'. Hence this has a double meaning, both crying out for Recca and calling him an idiot at the same time!

As I mentioned there are literally thousands of different kanji being used, and it would be impractical to show them all here, although if you choose to search you can find several on various websites.

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