![]() Murasaki Shikibu, a Heian-era poet who wrote “ The Tale of Genji”, helped to develop the system into what it is today. Interestingly, even though women were traditionally not educated, much of the Japanese writing system is due to women. A new system of writing was developed to adapt kanji to the Japanese language, and this eventually turned into hiragana. However, kanji didn’t match up with the already established Japanese grammar. Before that, Japan had no writing system of their own. Kanji originate from China but were imported into Japanese sometime around the 5th century.Īccording to Japanese history, Wani, a scholar from Korea, introduced Japan to both Confucianism and kanji. Now, what is kanji in Japanese? What does kanji - written 漢字 - even mean? It literally means “Chinese characters,” which should clue you in on this next part… About Japanese Kanji - Where Did They Come From? For now, just know kanji can combine with other kanji to create new meanings, and sometimes they change sounds. When 水 combines with 着 (the kanji for “to wear” or “clothing”), it becomes 水着 ( mizugi) which means “swimsuit.” Basically, “water clothes.” But in the word 水曜日 (which means “Wednesday”), we use its other reading, sui and it becomes suiyoubi.ĭon’t worry, I’ll explain that more later. This kanji’s English meaning is “water.” Its Japanese pronunciation is most often みず ( mizu) orすい ( sui). The easy part is that they make reading easier.Įven if you don’t know how to pronounce the kanji, if you recognize it’s word meaning, you can get the idea of the sentence.įor example, the kanji 水. Their pronunciation and readings vary based on what other kanji or kana they’re connected with - that’s the difficult part. Kanji symbols can stand alone, or combine with other kanji or kana to create more words, ideas, or turn a kanji into a verb. Kanji are Japanese symbols that represent whole words. Kana are basically the print and cursive alphabet of Japanese, a phonetic syllabary system. The other two are hiragana and katakana, collectively called kana. Kanji are Japanese characters, and one of three writing systems in Japanese. You need to know kana before learning kanji. And by the time we’re done, you’re going to be on your way to reading and writing in Japanese like a pro.Ī note before we begin: If you haven’t learned the kana yet, click here and read this article first. I’ve got all this and more covered below. “How do I pronounce kanji? How will I ever read this?”.“Why do the Japanese use so many writing systems? Why do they even need kanji?”.“Why are kanji so complex? Why do I have to learn stroke order?”.“Are kanji Chinese or Japanese? I thought they were Chinese?”.If you’ve stumbled upon kanji, you may have a million questions, such as… And suddenly, Japanese got a whole lot harder. You’ve learned how to read and write the Japanese alphabet, called kana. Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
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