Japanese Kanji

At first, all of these kind of characters really bugged me. I felt frustrated when I met kanji in every places that I visit. Because of the Kanji, I wanted go back and it made me feel so isolated.

By the way, what does it mean Kanji?

Kan-means chinese , and ji means characters in japanese. Overall, it means "chinese characters". You know what? The thing is, Japan had borrowed the kanji several hundreds years ago. But now in 21st century, it is still considered as "chinese". Even, chinese themselves do not remember that those "Kan -Ji" belongs to them and chinese characters has been developing for those years and had been changed a lot. But Japanese people remember that these characters from outside and they label them as "foreign" one. You see, once you belong to a different world then staying in Japan for several hundreds years may be not enough time to be considered as a part of Japan title.

Anyway, if you know about two thousand kanji, it is said that you can read newspapers and your professional books. My oldest son attends 5th grade of elementary school in Japan. He learns kanji all those years, and he knows about thousand kanji-s, I guess. Next year, when he finishes the elementary school he is expected to know about 1945 kanji.

In my case, I did not have any intentions to learn kanji. I wish I were learning kanji.

As far as know, learning kanji requires a lot of different skills and steps. I mean, even you know meaning of the certain kanji, it does not means that you can read it properly, and can write it. Because, almost all kanji have two ways of pronounciation: Chinese and Japanese. They call it On-yomi and Kun-yomi.

Also, there is one more frustrating fact. On-yomi is not unique. At least it has two, or more ways of pronounciation, that you have to memorize. While, it seems, the kun-yomi, the japenese way of pronounciation is unique. Usually, it is quite common that when you learn how to pronounce the kanji, you have to memorize at least 3 different ways of pronounciation.

Writing a kanji also very orderful. I mean, kanji consists of strokes, that have own orders of writing. Second strokes should follow first stroke, third stroke should follow second and first etc. You see, even if you learn one kanji, you have to learn seperately, how to write it, how to pronounce it and what does it mean.