Kanji
Ah, 日本語, how have you graced us with your many odd quirks. From the fact that "は" can be read as "ha" and "wa", to the mystery surrounding a word as simple as あなた anata (you). Anata are truly a difficult language to learn. However, those various little quirks are absolutely nothing compared to the wall all learners have to face at some point. That little wall goes by the name of kanji.
Kanji, or 漢字, are characters from the Chinese writing system, imported straight into Japan. As you can imagine, using the writing system from a completely different language than yours means you have to make some drastic changes, and completely alter the way you write. For this reason, countries such as Vietnam and Korea have abolished the usage of these characters, but Japan persisted with them, so now all learns have to climb the tedious ladder of more than 2,000 characters.
Originally, the Japanese language had no written form. Back then, what is now known as China was highly influential in Asia. Some of that influence spread to Japan. When Japan learnt to write, they did so from China, and they took China's writing system along with them, importing the characters. Japan took more than just the characters, though. They also imported many new words, which are not found in their language, along with their pronunciations, while the original Japanese words stuck around. The kango numbering system (you know, the one that goes ichi, ni, san) was also imported.
The earliest written forms of Japanese are entirely in Chinese characters--one of the oldest writing systems still in use today. Japan now has fancier stuff like ひらがな (hiragana) and カタカナ (katakana) to write down its language, but kanji stuck around.
Kanji is unlike a lot of other writing systems, in that ideas are written down, not sounds. Sometimes, kanji contains hints about how they're read, but that feature is more prominent in modern Chinese languages that didn't go through the process of adapting another writing system. For example, 请, 清, and 晴 are all read "qing" in Mandarin, because they share the same 青 radical. Most of the time, you'll left with a representation of an idea, which can be given any reading. For example, 凹 means "concave", but it doesn't give you any hint about how to say it; there is nothing to sound out. You have to rote learn the pronunciation. You can straight up import 凹 into English, and give it a reading of "concave", just like how kanji originally arrived in Japan.
Why is Kanji so Hard?
There's a reason why kanji has a reputation as being the most difficult part of Japanese. Here we go.
Each kanji has two distinct groups of readings, being kunyomi and onyomi. When the characters came to Japan, there tends to be a Japanese word that already exists, which refers to the same concept. This tends to be the kunyomi reading. The onyomi pronunciation came from one of the many languages of China, and is typically modified to fit the Japanese language. The onyomi pronunciation will differ with the modern pronunciation in basically any Chinese language, because:
- Pronunciations were taken more than a thousand years ago, and both sets of languages have evolved since then.
- There are many dialects of Chinese, for the pronunciations to come from. In fact, these dialects are so different some consider them to be separate languages.
- The pronunciations often had to be adapted to fit the Japanese pronunciations.
Let's take 海 as an example. 海 has a kunyomi reading of うみ umi, and an onyomi reading of かい kai -- The kai reading is much closer to the modern Mandarin pronunciation of hǎi. Another example of pronunciation differences is, well, kanji. Even though both characters in 漢字 uses the onyomi pronunciations, "kanji" still looks pretty different than "hànzì". If you learn a language like Mandarin, you still have to learn multiple pronunciations for a lot of characters, but there are a lot fewer characters where you have to learn these pronunciations for. If you learn Japanese, you usually have to learn at least two.
Oh, and we've made it sound like each kanji has only one onyomi and kunyomi pronunciation. In reality, this is not the case, and often kanji has multiple readings in each category. Their reading changes depending on which word they are a part of. You have to memorise which reading to use in which situations.
Complicating things further, some kanji look exactly the same, or very similar, to katakana characters. Examples of them include:
- 力, meaning power, looks very similar to カ ka.
- 才, meaning "genius", or "gifted", looks very similar to オ o.
- 卜, which is really used only for names (like 吉卜力 in China), looks like ト to.
In addition, Japan still mostly uses the traditional set of characters, while Mainland China uses the simplified characters. The simplified characters are, well, simplified, to make them easier to learn and write. Although Japanese has shinjitai to make some characters easier, the majority of characters are still unsimplified. If you head over to Wikipedia's Differences between Shinjitai and Simplified characters page, you'll see that "Simplification in PRC only" list is way larger than the "Simplification in Japan only" list. Simplified characters don't always make the language easier to read, though. Most simplification in Chinese alter the radicals (the parts that make up a character), meaning the fundamentals of the word still hasn't changed. It isn't that hard to jump from the “讠” radical to the "言" radical in 话 to 話. However, the unsimplified Japanese characters are a bit harder to read, especially on a screen where the lines are packed together. This means that Japanese speakers usually has an easier time comprehend Traditional Chinese, than Simplified.
Fortunately, the massive wall isn't as insurmountable as it seems...
Kanji aren't composed of random lines and strokes; they're composed of radicals. These are the components that make up a character. For example, take 女, then add 子, and suddenly you get 好. It's a new character, but it's composed of two old ones. In fact, you'll find that almost every character is composed of these radicals. If they're not composed of them, they are probably a radical. Instead of memorising random strokes, you'll only have to memorise what each character is made up of.
Kanji vs. Hanzi
Differences
Some differences between Japanese kanji and Chinese hanzi include:
- Most characters have completely different pronunciations, even between the modern Standard Mandarin pronounciations, and the on-yomi readings (taken from ancient China). Examples include 川, read as "kawa" in one language, and "chuān” in another, and 地図, read as "chizu" (Yes, it's the name of the anime studio) in Japanese, but "dìtú" in Standard Mandarin. Note that the "図" character is simplified differently in Chinese than Japanese, and it's written as "图" instead of "図".
- There are differences in vocabulary. For example, "study" in Japanese is commonly 勉強する, but 学习 in Standard Mandarin. Japanese also has 学ぶ, but that focuses more on the rewarding results of study.
- Sometimes the differences are subtle, like 明日 (ashita) and 明天 (míngtiān). The former's from Japanese, and the latter's from Mandarin. The first character 明 ("next", "tomorrow") stays the same, and speakers won't have much trouble switching between 日 ("day", "sun") and 天 ("sky").
- As the sets of characters in both languages have gone through a round of simplification (Chinese almost went through two rounds), there will inevitably be differences between how the characters are simplified.
- Some characters are never simplified in both languages. These tend to be the very simple characters that require few strokes to write.
- Some characters have different simplifications in both languages. For example, "圓" is simplified to "圆" (you know, from 魔法少女小圆) in Chinese, but "円" in Japanese[1]. The word for the local currency remains separate in Mandarin, with "圆" referring to "circular" and 元 referring to the yuan. In Japanese, 円 refers to both circular and the yen.
- If you get lucky, you get a character like 學, which has the same simplification (学) in both languages.
- Japanese often uses vocabulary that is not regularly used in Mandarin Chinese. For example, dog is 犬 in Japanese, but 狗 in Chinese. 犬 is used often in modern Japanese, but it is an obsolete character in Chinese and has been replaced with 狗.
- Sometimes the same set of characters means completely opposite things, like the infamous 手纸 example, which means "letter" in Japanese, but "toilet paper" in Standard Mandarin.
Similarities
Despite all the history, some similarities still remain between the Chinese (specifically Standard Mandarin), and Japanese kanji. For this reason, speakers of Chinese languages tends to have an easier time learning Japanese, than speakers of only English:
- Kanji meanings tend to be shared between the two languages, especially with the simpler characters. For example, "十一月" means "November" in both languages. For this reason, literate speakers of one language can often understand the very very basic meaning of another, and should have no trouble understanding street signs. In fact, some speakers can communicate to each other, by writing down kanji, even though they don't know each other's language.
- For example, take the simple sentence 野菜を食べた (yasai wo tabeta, I ate vegetables). Someone that knows only Chinese can see "野菜" (edible herb / vegetable), and "食" (eat), and figure out it probably means something along the lines of "eat vegetables". However, they miss the subtle た ta, which puts the verb into past tense. In a sentence like 野菜を食べない (yasai wo tabenai, I didn't eat vegetables), they still see the same two words, so probably have the same guess to its meaning. However, they will miss the ない form of 食べる (eat); they'll think the sentence means "eat vegetables", missing out on the negation.
- Very rarely, some characters, such as 医 have on-yumi readings that is the exact same as their modern Standard Mandarin counterparts. If you get exceptionally lucky, characters like 愛 (爱 in simplified) have the exact same romanisations (ai).
- A lot of the characters you will encounter still look the exact same in both languages, after the various rounds of simplification in both languages. This is especially true with simple characters, such as 日, 木, 中, 川, 上, 山. This also applies to the numbers 一二三四五六七八九十百千万 etc. (This does not include 億 / 亿, which is not simplified in Japanese).
- Some of the vocabulary shared between the two languages might surprise you, given that they're pretty niche and complex. Examples of this includes 魔法少女, as well as 魔女 ("witch"). Other times, speakers can guess the meaning of words in Japanese, based on the kanji they already know. Someone who knows only a Chinese language will probably figure out that "新字体" (new character body/form) means something along the lines of "simplified characters".
Because a lot of kanji are also used in Chinese languages, Chinese titles of Anime and Manga tend to look closer to their Japanese counterparts. For example, 宝石の国 is 宝石之国 in Chinese, but "Land of the Lustrous" in Japanese, and 魔女の宅急便 is 魔女宅急便 in Chinese, but "Kiki's Delivery Service" in English. In both examples, the English titles feature words that are not seen in the Japanese and Mandarin Chinese examples. The character "land" (which looks something like 地) doesn't appear in 宝石の国/宝石之国, and the name "Kiki" (キキ/琪琪) doesn't appear in 魔女の宅急便 / 魔女宅急便. However, "anime titles in China always look more like their Japanese counterparts" isn't a universal truth. Kanji isn't Japan's only writing system, so some titles such as ヴァイオレット・エヴァーガーデン look very different in both languages, being "紫罗兰永恒花园" in Chinese. The romanization (Vaioretto Evāgāden) looks much closer to "Violet Evergarden" than "zǐluólán yǒnghéng huāyuán". Another example is メイドインアビス, which looks nothing like "来自深渊".
Why does Japan Still Use Kanji?
Let's take the following sentence:
母は花が好きです。
It's a pretty simple sentence: My mother likes flowers. Let's try writing it out using hiragana alone:
ははははながすきです。
Did you notice the barrage of four "は" at the start of the sentence? Try to figure out which one of those are pronounced "wa". It's a pretty difficult task! The Japanese language has a lot of homonyms, and kanji helps differentiate the meanings apart, and make sentences more readable. In English, you have the absolutely golden "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Now imagine there are no capital letters to at least give you a clue about what a "Buffalo" could mean, and imagine there are no spaces between words. Good luck.
Here's another one:
庭には鶏がいます。
にわにはにわとりがいます。
Notice the three repeats of "niwa"?
That said, it is very much possible to write Japanese without kanji. If you add spaces between words, things become quite readable, as a lot of the early games did.
Kanji also makes it easier to search up new words you're not familiar with: just copy paste the kanji into a dictionary (it's a whole other story if you're not on a computer). If you just look up the hiragana, you can get a lot of other words that look the exact same, but have completely different meanings.
Glossary of Terms
- Hanzi: Written hànzì with the tones, this is the Mandarin Chinese reading of 漢字 (simplified 汉字）. Kanji is the pronunciation of the same phrase in modern Japanese. "Hanzi" as a term specifically refers to the characters used in Chinese, while "kanji" refers to the character as used in Japanese.
- Jōyō kanji: Written 常用漢字, this is a list of the most common 2,136 kanji. These are taught in primary and secondary schools. If you learn these characters, you should be able to understand the kanji in all Japanese text, excluding very academic or scientific text.
- Kana: A syllabary used to write Japanese mora. The two systems in use today are hiragana, and katakana. You can write all kanji using nothing but kana, but this will make Japanese people hate you, as it is difficult to read.
- Kunyomi: The pronunciation of kanji taken from Japan.
- Onyomi: The pronunciation of kanji taken from China, then used in Japanese.
- Radical: The parts that make up a kanji. For example, 明 (as in 明日) is made up of 日 and 月.
- Shinjitai: Written 新字体, this is the simplified set of Japanese characters, which are often used today. Compare with simplified Chinese characters.
- Strokes: The number of times you need to set down your pen on paper, to write a character. For example, 一 has one stroke, while 二 has two, because a pen needs to touch the paper one time to write 一, but it needs to touch the paper twice to write 二.
- ↑ As a tangent, one of the readings for "圆" / "円" is まどか madoka, hence why the titular character chooses to use "円" to describe herself, if she must in a single kanji.