studying kanji

I'm going to talk about kanji because I just started learning them in November and I kind of love them.

I've always been afraid of kanji, because a long time ago I read a post online about how hard it is to study Japanese. This post said that kanji were "3 million embodiment of your worst nightmare." Which I think is ridiculous. Kanji are, in fact, the key to the kingdom of Japanese comprehension.

The way I learned most of my vocabulary in English was reading. I learned how to let English talk to me using its own words. I'm trying to do that now with Japanese: letting Japanese grammar talk to me in Japanese.

Japanese writing is divided into three sets of writing: hiragana (ひらがな), katakana (カタカナ), and kanji.

Katakana are generally used for phonetic spelling and words that are imported from other languages. Example: コーヒー is "ko-hee" or "coffee." A カフィラテ, or "kah-fee-rah-tay" is "cafe latte."

Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words for which there are no kanji, such as suffixes (-san for "Ms." and "Mr.") or particles that show the other words' relationships to each other. (The same as English words like a, the, in, and from operate in sentences.) Hiragana are also used to show how kanji should be pronounced, such as for obscure kanji or as an aid for kids still learning kanji. These helping hiragana are called furigana, and they're kinda the same as me having to Google "tarpaulin" and have the Google voice say it for me. (Apparently it's tar-PAUL-in.) Hiragana are the phonetic building blocks of the Japanese language.

If Hiragana and Katakana are like the alphabets of Japanese, Kanji are the words. However, they don't work quite the same way as English words. A single kanji can be read multiple ways, both in meaning and literal pronunciation (for example, 山 is mountain and can be read as "san" サン or "yama" やま ). There are context cues that can help with this, which I have not yet learned. To me, it initially seemed easier to just write everything out in hiragana, because then it's obvious how everything should be pronounced. Right?

For example:

What time is it?
Ima wa nan-ji desu ka?
いまはなんじですか

Except to a Japanese reader, the hiragana section looks like this: "Whattimeisit?"

Japanese doesn't have spaces. Japanese has kanji. Kanji are what turn a long string of hiragana (with no clear beginning and end for words) into something easily comprehensible.

ima     wa     nan-ji    desu    ka?
いま　  は   　なんじ　です　 か
今        は      何時      です    か

Kanji is what changes もくようび into 木曜日, which is "mokuyoubi," or Thursday. It makes the meaning clear without the necessity of context clues for the reader to figure out if "moku" means "wood/tree"  木 or "eye" 目. One "moku" is used in the word for Thursday, and the other is not. Sure, you can tell which "moku" is meant by reading "youbi" and realizing that this "moku" is the one for "Thursday," but the visual cue of the kanji shaves off that little extra time you'd otherwise be taking to get that from the context.

Kanji is the spacing and punctuation of Japanese. Now that I'm learning kanji, I'm finding that I would much prefer the sentence 今は何時ですか  to いまはなんじですか. One, I can quickly skim and understand, while the other I have to sound out the hiragana in my head to realize how they're supposed to be grouped into words. I'm sure a Japanese-literate individual wouldn't have as much trouble with the hiragana sentence as I do, since I'm still learning to recognize words, but the gist is the same. One is quickly legible, the other takes a bit more work.

Kanji have a specific stroke order, where each line of the symbol must be made in a certain order. Stroke order (and the direction the stroke is made) are important to learning to correctly write Japanese kanji; it makes your kanji look like everyone else's, which I think helps with legibility. There's a logic to it, though; horizontal strokes are usually made before vertical ones, central strokes usually precede the outer ones, and kanji with box frames usually complete the box before the stuff inside it. If that sounds like a lot to remember, know this: my muscle memory has started taking over, so I've been able to occasionally make accurate guesses about the stroke order of a new kanji based on my previous repetitious experience writing others.

And repetition is definitely helpful. As children, we're all made to practice writing until forming letters with a pencil is second nature. Heck, I've even changed the way I write some of my letters in the last two years because I've found that the visual cues of a tail on my "u" and a straight line at the beginnings of my "m" and "n" makes it easier for my students to read my writing, since that's how they're taught to write the English alphabet letters. (I have been schooled on my ability to write the English alphabet by Taiwanese 6 year olds, and it was the cutest thing ever.) Therefore, to get better at writing kanji, I'll write them, repeatedly, until I can stop thinking about which pieces come next and just let my pencil move naturally. It's painstaking, but it's how I'll learn, so that's what I'm doing.

When I say I practice Japanese all the time, I mean I practice Japanese ALL THE TIME. At school, I count my steps in my head ( in Japanese) as I climb the stairs. I try to read random signs all over the school, even the ones in the toilet. At train stations, I try to read the kanji and hiragana telling me which trains are coming and when, even though most of the screens also show this information in English. At stop lights, I look at the license plates around me and quiz myself on the single hiragana characters on them. Waiting for the ATM at the post office, I look at calendars and see how fast I can convert 木，金，日，木 into English. (Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Thursday.) Thanks to how often I stare at license plates, I can now recognize the kanji for Mito City on sight. ( 水戸市 ) And I haven't even studied these kanji.

I came to Japan with literally one mission: learn Japanese. I am doing my absolute best to accomplish that as quickly and as well as I can. Because immersion helps you learn a language, but the process only works if you immerse yourself. It's not immersion if you stay floating on top, singling out the few bits of your native language you can find and just guessing about the rest.

So I'm studying kanji. Not just when my book is in front of me, but all the time, and in every way I can. I'm trying to make Japanese as real for me as English is. Slowly, it's working. And seeing that happen is extremely cool.

I'm glad I like kanji. I'm glad learning language is fun. If it wasn't, this would be... well, it'd still be hard, but I'd probably be more frustrated. Instead, I'm just excited and determined. Japanese is a puzzle I'm putting together, one kanji at a time. I've nearly got my first 100.

Here's to hundreds of kanji more!