English Kanji

I have talked about Kanji before but for those who either missed it or came in late, Prior to contact with China 1500 or so years ago Japan had no writing system. When China connected with Japan, they gave them Kanji, the Chinese Idiographic writing system (think Egyptian hieroglyphs). A “Letter” in Kanji has a meaning, not a pronunciation. So a single character means “river” or “mountain” or “run” or “walk”. The Japanese adapted these Kanji to their way of life. But instead of simply changing the way the “letters” are read, they added the Chinese readings to the existing Japanese readings. So now most Kanji can be read one of two ways, either the Japanese way, or the Chinese way. For example the Kanji for “Mountain” is read “Yama” (As in Fuji-yama). But the Chinese reading for the same Kanji is read “San” (Which is actually how the Japanese read it “Fuji-san”) When you are talking about going to a mountain, you use “Yama”, when you are talking about a specific mountain (Like Mount Fuji), you use “San”… You just have to learn when to use which reading, this is simply the rule for mountain… other words have different rules.
This would be complicated enough, but as the cultures of Japan consolidated and stopped being small, warring country-states and started being the unified “Japan”, the different dialects of Japanese were consolidated as well, and those readings were added to the Kanji. So, now some Kanji have one Chinese reading and one primary Japanese reading, and sometimes many other Japanese readings… For example the kanji for water is read “Sui” in Chinese, and “Mizu” in Japanese… and “Mi” or “Mina”… and when you use “Sui” and when you use “Mizu” or “Mina” or “Mi” is just something you have to learn.
Luckily, some things have only one reading, the Chinese reading. These things are usually things that Japan didn’t have but China did have prior to contact or things that were discovered in China and brought over later. For example, Electricity has only one reading “Den”. And really the kanji with the most readings are the simple ones. The Kanji that make up “Ministry of Governmental Oversight and Observation” really only have one reading… Technically they might have two, but you don’t need to learn the other one (Unless you want to participate in a “Kanji bee”). “Water”, “mountain”, “ground”, “sun”, “moon”, these are the Kanji that have the most readings.

Now, it may seem this is complicated enough, but the Japanese have to make it even worse; you must write the Kanji in the correct order… you can’t just scribble out the Kanji in any way you feel is cool… no, you must write this section, then all horizontal lines, then all vertical lines (with a few notable exceptions where you must write the vertical lines first…). It’s maddening… and I love it…

Which makes me think I am certifiably mad. I really have taken to Kanji. I love learning them, I love learning Stroke Order (Which lines go first…), I’m really enjoying this…

There is one saving grace, complicated Kanji are often constructed out of simpler Kanji. For example the Kanji for “Bright” is the kanji for sun and moon next to each other. This makes it a little easier to remember the Kanji, by making up little stories I can remember how to write the Kanji; “The Sun and Moon are both very BRIGHT”.

I use this technique on even more complicated kanji: “It takes a WEEK for the samurai to tell his story in the shelter by the roadside” The Kanji for week is composed of “Road”, “Shelter”, “Samurai” and “Mouth/story”. If you speak to that same soldier in the shelter, you can RESEARCH information about the enemy from him in the form of a story, thus “Speak”, “Shelter”, “Samurai” and “Mouth/Story” becomes “Research/look up”

Sometimes I will ask Maia about Kanji in this manner: “Dear, what is “Thread” and “Winter”?” to which she will reply “End or Finish; “Owari”.” I will then make up a story for myself to remember the Kanji: “The thread of the year ENDs in winter”

But this is a very Western way of approaching Kanji… my Japanese compatriots look at me like I am mad when I explain this way of thinking. They learned them as complete units, not like words with “Letters” inside them… they learned them the way I learned to read words as a dyslexic child: like each word is a complete picture… Which may explain why I’m taking to Kanji like a fish to water, it’s natural to me to take a word and “snapshot” it and then understand the meaning.

But I discovered an interesting insight into the Japanese culture, by looking at this in reverse.

Today I was in 2-2 and working with my second years on the grammar point “er” and “est” (Godzilla is strongER than King Kong, Godzilla is the strongEST of all monsters.) And one of my girls is working on a worksheet, and I’m watching her over her shoulder.

The Worksheet shows a picture of China and Japan, the word “large” and has the text China ___ _____ ____ Japan.

So she writes: “China is large than Japan”.

I point at the sentence and I say, “Don’t forget the “r”…”
She says “Oh! Right!” and then she takes out her eraser and erases the entire word.

“China is _____ than Japan.”

Then she promptly writes “larger” in the exact same place.

“China is larger than Japan.”

I’ve seen my teachers do this exact same thing…they will forget the “s” on the end of a noun while writing on the blackboard and then they will erase the entire word and then rewrite it with an “s”.

Because to them “large” is a different “kanji” than “larger”… “cat” is different than “cats”…

Thus, my fellow teachers can’t understand the Samurai in the shelter on the road telling a story for a week… it’s all one unit: “Shuu”… week… not components… a complete unit. And if some of them equate English the same way with each word is a complete unit it could get ugly fast.

This seems to explain why spacing is so foreign to my first years… it shouldn’t be important, technically. Kanji doesn’t have spacing, and only an idiot uses spacing when writing Japanese. Can you imagine what must be going on in the subconscious of my poor First Years’ minds?

ifIwritethingslikethis it should be perfectly clear to everyone, after all, it has six “English Kanji” in it…. and they are pretty clear, aren’t they? Wait, you are telling me that all English-speakers need the Kanji separated? And that the English Kanji changes simply because it is at the beginning of a sentence? Or because it has a plural? So English has three Kanji for every single word?!? Damn… English is HARD! But, hey, look! Some English Kanji only have one Kanji per word… “Jones” for example… wait, no… that has the Kanji “Jones’s” too and “Joneses”? I hate English… It may have many readings, but at least Japanese only has ONE Kanji per word…

…And I just taught my second years that there are yet two more English Kanji when you are comparing things (larger and largest)… I’m amazed they haven’t all revolted and killed us all off…

I think some of my kids equate the alphabet with Hiragana (The Japanese Phonetic characters, primarily used for grammar and to assist in the reading of Kanji), but the problem is that it doesn’t work the same way in both languages… the letter “ka” is always pronounced “ka” in Hiragana… it never changes… the letter “c”, however, might be pronounced “See” or “Kah.” Which, logically would be more like Kanji with its myriad readings… I think were I Japanese, I would make the logic step from Romaji (The Japanese word for English letters) to Kanji rather than Romaji to Hiragana.

Hmm…

They see things exactly the way my dyslexia-stricken brain sees words: Complete units. It’s why I have such problems with Random Capitalization. Some of my… er “English Kanji” in my Brain have just been Learned without their lowercase “kanji”…

The more I learn about the Japanese, the more I learn about me.

-Me.