Does anyone notice a pattern when learning Kanji? The answer's probably obvious. By that I mean… - Feed Post by Bradlefty
Does anyone notice a pattern when learning Kanji? The answer's probably obvious. By that I mean some of you probably do.
I notice a pattern in the on-readings while I was learning Kanji like:
- 各 KAKU
- 客 KYAKU
- 落 RAKU
- 略 RYAKU
We're able to guess the on-reading by using the radicals. But how do you get a grass and water radical to change the k to an r? What about the kun-reading? How are you supposed to guess it at first when you encounter a Kanji you've never seen before? I'd like someone with a lot of knowledge to explain this for me. Thanks.
I notice a pattern in the on-readings while I was learning Kanji like:
- 各 KAKU
- 客 KYAKU
- 落 RAKU
- 略 RYAKU
We're able to guess the on-reading by using the radicals. But how do you get a grass and water radical to change the k to an r? What about the kun-reading? How are you supposed to guess it at first when you encounter a Kanji you've never seen before? I'd like someone with a lot of knowledge to explain this for me. Thanks.
posted by Bradlefty
Comments 9
That's because Kanji came from the Chinese Hanzi. It's much easier to explain things with examples, so here's an example:
Here's the Chinese Hanzi for ocean: 洋 It's made up with the "water" radical (⺡) and the "sheep" radical (羊).
But how does sheep and water mean ocean?
Well, you sea, the word sheep and the word ocean were both pronounced as "yang". So they decided to use the sheep character to mean ocean too. But there was a problem, if they did that, then they wouldn't be able to know the difference between sheep and ocean. So, they decided to put 3 water drops near the character.
So, the "water" radical (⺡) shows its meaning, the "sheep" radical (羊) shows its pronunciation.
Another example:
The Chinese Hanzi for shrimp (虾) pronounced as "xia"
"Insect" radical (虫) shows its meaning, "down, below, under" radical (下) shows it's pronunciation "xia"
And there're many many more examples of this.
Ahhhhhh, I see. This has enlightened my knowledge quite a bit. So the "pronunciation" character doesn't have to do with the meaning but the other radical does? That is so cool. This'll help me out in the long run. Thanks for sharing this to me. It helps a lot.- No problemo!
- The main question is, how do you get a radical to change a Kanji's pronunciation? Like adding 田 (ta) to 各 (KAKU) to make RYAKU?
- well, Japan really messed up Kanji's pronunciations. You may find similarities between some words, but Japanese Kanji doesn't work like how Chinese Hanzi does. Japanese is just random.
Or, you could go to the To Do section (on the side there), click the Kanji link and look at the lists of Kanji there to learn them (includes stroke order animations), instead of having to guess and ruin your chances of Excellent rating until you get it right another 18 times.
It's so cool. XD
There's also another interesting thing:
古い = ふるい
古 has the on-yomi こ
So...
個 = こ
故 = こ
湖 = こ
And many other kanji with 古 have the sound 'ko'.
Your example is mainly because chinese has many TONES and japanese doesn't For example, water in chinese is shui(I can't remember the tone, but I think it's #3). So in japanese the on-yomi is SUI. Similar, right? Since japanese doesn't have the tones and also there was nothing like google when they picked up the chinese ideograms, a lot of errors/mistakes ocurried in the proccess. THis is why all those kanji you've said have simillar spelling. The ones I showed even have the same spelling. Hope it helps.
Sorry for my english lol.
Also, please search in youtube for 'nihonjin no shiranai nihonfo'(literally japanese(language) that the japanese don't now). It's a cool series and also it explains some of those topics xD. Includind why the word for tuna in chinese is another fish in jap LOL- Thanks for the explanation, 5rree5. And your English was okay. By that I mean I was able to get what you meant. I'll check out the series.
