Japanese Kanji

Also Read: The Basics: Forming Japanese Sentences

The Japanese writing system is comprised of three alphabets - Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. All three can be found in any one sentence, and an entire sentence can be written in hiragana or katakana. Modern day Japanese writing uses Kanji foremost(nouns, verbs, adjectives), and includes Hiragana to complete the grammar in sentences. Katakana is used when there is no kanji or hiragana for a word or letters, and for Japanized English words.

Hiragana and Kutakana each have 46 alphabet letters, and, they are also known as characters or symbolic letters. Characters from Kanji are known as ideographics, and they are unique also.

In English, the spoken and written word are the same, however, in Japanese they are not, as you can see by looking at the translations.

All the English to Japanese word translations on this page are written in Easy Kanji (ideographs) and some have included Hirgana/Katakana also. Kanji characters are characterized by their 'stroke count', and 'order of strokes'.

Meaning each kanji character has a certain number of strokes, and they must be written in an exact manner. 'Easy kanji' are categorized as those having the least amount of strokes. Japanese students learn about 2000 Kanji during their school years. In all, there are about 40,000-50000 kanji in writing although only about 2000 are actually used day to day.

There are several methods for learning Kanji. You can simply learn each character for each kanji word by practising writing them. Typically you would start with easy kanji and then progress to the more difficult. They are known as Kanji N5,N4,N3,N2,N1; with N5 being the easiest kanji to learn.

You can also learn the Radicals for kanji first, then learn the Kanji words. Radicals contain all the singular characters that are used in almost all kanji words so learning the radicals first(about 200 of them) may make learning Kanji easier.

To see an example of how radicals are used with Kanji; Click here to view Kanji written with radical 方

Also, "Radicals may appear in any position in a character. For example, the radical 女 appears on the left side in the kanji characters 姐, 媽, 她, 好 and 姓, but it appears at the bottom in 妾."(1)

Pronunciation of Japanese Letters

And, if a 'word searched' does not show a kanji spelling/meaning, then that means there is no kanji for that particular word. So, if you want to include it in a sentence you will need to write it using hiragana or katakana.

Some Additional Kanji