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 Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:57 am
Well at the moment I am learning Kanji, it's fun and easy to remember for me.... that is until i found out one symbol can have so many different meanings, however Ive tried to understand this part so many times... Something about Kun readings? can someone help me out? ._.
How can you tell what the Kanji symbol means when your reading it with the hiragana and katakana?? Cause apparently when you mix them it means something different........................ I'll letyou guys explain it to me.
._. help ;-;
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:10 pm
There's usually only a couple meanings for a given kanji -- they're basically ideographs, the idea being that they represent a specific meaning, not a specific sound.
But since they don't represent a specific sound necessarily (at least not in Japanese 8D wink they often have more than one reading. The "Kun" readings that you mention are the native Japanese reading. This reading is usually used when the kanji is being written as a word all by itself. The other kind of reading you need to worry about is "On" readings. These are based on the original Chinese pronunciation of each character (but Japan borrowed the kanji from China hundreds of years ago so they don't really sound much like Chinese today, lol). Normally "On" readings are used when two or more kanji are grouped together.
Example:
春夏秋冬
These are the kanji for the four seasons.
春 Haru = spring
夏 Natsu = summer
秋 Aki = fall
冬 Fuyu = winter
The readings above, when you use the kanji by themselves, are called their "kun" readings. So if I wanted to say, for example, 'I was born in spring', I would say "Watashi wa haru ni umaremashita."
The "On" readings, for when you use these characters in compound words, are:
春 Shun
夏 Ka
秋 Shuu
冬 Tou
春夏秋冬 So when you put them all together like this, they're read "shunkashuutou". Which means, as you might guess, 'the four seasons' smile
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions/need more explanation!
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Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:44 am
Thankyou for your help, I'm slowly getting there @.@ lol Ok! So Kun is where the Kanji symbol is used on its own, and On is where its used with other Kanji. If the Kanji is combined with Hiragana does that make any difference too?
Thanks again for your help <3
By the way; personally how many Kanji symbols have you mastered and what are the most commonly used in...let's say... newspapers/books?
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Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:22 am
Kanji combined with hiragana are usually kun reading. For example, "to start something" is 始める hajimeru -- "haji" is considered a kun reading.
No prob, always happy to help smile
Uh... how many have I? I have no clue, I've never kept count redface I can read a lot more than I can write, though. (lol computers. It's because I type everything) Maybe 1500~1700 ish? I'm really not sure, it might be a lot more or a lot less than that. All I know is that I can generally read things of average difficulty (newspaper/magazine articles, etc) but I usually encounter a few words I don't know in just about everything I read. Uh, except manga. Most manga is pretty easy. ninja
There are exactly 1945 kanji, called the Joyo Kanji, that are officially approved by the Japanese government for daily use and everyone is supposed to know them (they teach these in school, of course). If I remember right, newspapers try to restrict themselves to just those 1945 kanji. Basically if you learn those you will know enough Japanese to read any text, but there are other rare characters/outdated characters and such that you still see occasionally, especially in books if that's the author's writing style. The main place you might encounter outdated characters is in people's names, since most people don't like to change those.
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