Substance, Not Fluff

So, I was trying to catch up on reading the Gakuranman blog (I finally got around to putting it in my blogroll section here, which I have been neglecting for too long) and I see a site called Skitter being reviewed. It’s another one of these sites for learning Chinese and/ or Japanese kanji. Except it seems to require credit card info for a free trial. So, I’m not going to be touching the nuts and bolts of it.

Having said that…

This entire topic rather annoys me.

Part of this site’s attraction is the idea of using a mouse, or more effectively, a tablet, to draw kanji on a computer screen as a method for learning them. If you’re wondering what advantage this would have over doing this with a brush, ink and paper, there isn’t any advantage. You can stop wondering now.

More importantly, either you’re going to be physically drawing kanji, or not. If you’re not, the only reason to practice the stroke order is to force yourself to look at the kanji, stare at them, think about them, and use that as a way to memorize more.

Having said that, this isn’t like wood carving. Your brain isn’t going to remember kanji by feel alone. There’s too many of them, and that’s not really how this process works.

Kanji Are Concepts

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating: Kanji are concepts in image form. That’s where they come from, and that’s what they all function as, on some level.

I’ve read the introduction to Remembering the Kanji where the author writes about the ridiculousness of trying to associate the sun to the kanji for sun. (日) Well it’s more that you associate the kanji with the sun, not the other way around. The kanji represents the concept; the concept does not represent the kanji.

So that’s one thing.

Using Kanji Yourself

I never made more e-books like the one below due to a catastrophic lack of feedback, but never mind that. The point of what is below is really simple: use it and you won’t lose it. It is using kanji yourself to form intelligent, complete sentences (starting with short ones) that makes you literate and fluent in Japanese.

The whole problem with flash cards and these methods is that they teach you how to remember this kanji or that kanji, but you’re not creatively employing them. Writing individual kanji by stroke pales in comparison with dynamically using the ideas advanced by the kanji, and the words they are used to form, in actual, living Japanese.

Well, we can’t have that. In fact, my eBook, Mastering Japanese Kanji Volume 1, was focused on getting the information to the student’s mind without a long lead-up and actually lacked what I would consider a normal explanation. I wanted to think that any large book on kanji would explain but…? Well, who knows?

The bottom line is, some people don’t know.

On-Yomi

The so-called “on-yomi” is, quite literally, the phonetic reading of a kanji. This is, mind you, the phonetic reading in Japanese. The sounds may be based on Chinese kanji, like a drama might be based on a true story, but the Japanese tongue says sounds differently than the Chinese tongue for language purposes.

Typically, the on-yomi is used for compound kanji words. This is because on-yomi are designed to be easy to say in quick succession. The same is not true for many native Japanese words, which must be strung together in a more prolonged, less rapid-fire method.

Kun-yomi

The “kun-yomi” is the instructional reading of a kanji, teaching the native Japanese reading associated with that kanji. Many of these are complete words; that is, they are not fragments of words, but are words (kotoba) themselves.

Kun-yomi often include the stems of verbs. Single kanji verbs tend to use the kanji (which represents the stem) and hiragana (which conjugate).

Example: In taberu (To Eat), たべる is the kana. 食べる is the kanji. The 食　part is read as “ta” with the べる read as the “beru,” but essentially, the kanji is a flag indicating the word must be about eating, and by quickly glancing at the kana, the reader knows that “taberu” (To Eat) is the only possible reading of the word (the kotoba) involved.

Example: Water

Let’s take 水 (water) as an example.

On its own, 水 is read as みず (mizu), the native Japanese word for water. The kanji concept also represents water, so in this case, the kanji and the word are in perfect harmony. Mizu is the kun-yomi of 水.

Now, let’s take 水銀. This kanji is read as すいぎん (suigin). The すい (sui) part is the on-yomi of 水. The second part of the compound is ぎん (gin), for “silver.” This word actually means mercury, also known as quicksilver because it appears to behave like liquid silver.

This is a simple example of on-yomi and kun-yomi.

Article first published as Kanji: On-Yomi and Kun-Yomi on Technorati.

Kanji are the building blocks of written Japanese, but they are not an “alphabet” in the traditional sense. Let’s take one simple one:

This is the kanji for “heart.” If you look at it carefully, you’ll see the outlines of the valves of a human heart, as if the chest has been cut open to reveal it.

Just as in English, the heart stands for not just the literal, beating heart of a human being, but the figurative heart of a person; in other words, the mind and soul and emotional core of a person. Just as in English, “breaking someone’s heart” is purely emotional, so goes the Japanese expression 心が痛む (kokoro ga itamu) means, “It pains my heart.” This does not mean an early sign of a heart attack; it means being emotionally wounded. The heart hurts in a figurative sense.

Japanese mark the literal heart with the word 心臓 (shinzou), combining the above kanji with another that represents “viscera” and is used to mark the five viscera: liver, lungs, heart, kidney, and spleen (collectively known as 五臓 (gozou, 5 + viscera).

心底 (shinsoko, alternatively, shintei) is heart + bottom, and can be used to express “from the bottom of my heart” in ways that seem decidedly English. This can be used for heartfelt thanks to someone.

Kanji are the building blocks of the ideas represented by the Japanese language. This is why learning kanji in a step by step, sustainable way that leads an early learner to mastery of an increasing number of kanji is critical. Once learned and mastered, kanji convey ideas faster than words written with the Roman alphabet can manage. This leads to a greater sense of enjoyment when reading Japanese, from the simple to the complex.