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So I have a few questions about Kanji

So, regarding kanji, when multiple kanji to make a word, do the meanings of the separate kanji have to do with anything about the word you're making? Let's say the word house is made up of the kanji meaning blue and the kanji meaning grass, does that happen, you know, because the readings of the kanji making up the word house fit with the readings of the word house (I'm not saying this is what it actually is, it's just an example (also sorry if that sounded confusing, I can probably reword it if you ask me))? Next question: this isn't really kanji, it's more of a radical, anyway, can someone please tell me the on and kun readings for the radical ? I've been looking at a few websites and they all seem to tell me different meanings for them. Also, if you could tell me where you got the information from that would help (while I was typing this I realised it could be one of those no-meaning radicals, so if you could clarify that for me that would be great as well).

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Often times, the kanji are combined in order to form a word because of their individual meaning. For instance, 今日 (kyō - "today") = (ima - "now") + (hi - "day")
But, I must admit that I fail to see the relation in some cases.

Also, the radical you indicated means either "village" or "hill" (they're very similar). Not sure on the readings, though (sorry).
 
Oh ok I see now, thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, so they don't need to have any correlation, but in some cases they do? Like in 本当 (本 = hon - 'book'+ 当 = tou - 'hit')?
Yeah, the right village and left hill, but I just need the readings for them, thanks anyway.
 
Well, I think they do have correlation in basically all cases, it's just that some of those connections might be so long forgotten in modern Japanese. In your example, actually has several meanings: as a noun it means "book" or even "origin", but as an adjective it means "principle/primary", and as a pronoun it means "this".
So in that light, we can see why Japan is written as: 日本 (nihon/nippon - "Japan") = (ni/hi - "sun"/"day") + (hon - "origin"/"book") which translates as "land of the rising sun" (makes sense).
In the case of 本当, I'm wondering if alternate meanings could actually lead to a translation of "this origin" or even "this principle", which is loosely associated with the idea of truth/reality. Of course, it's used pretty often as the English equivalent of "really" (e.g., "I'm really sorry about that...") rather than strictly meaning "truth" (but coming from "truly").
 
Yeah that makes a lot of sense that the correlation could be long gone or one if it's other, maybe less common, meaning has some sort of correlation to the word. Also, sorry for the lack of knowledge as I haven't been studying kanji for very long and I only know about 70 kanji in total (this includes radicals).

By the way, even though this is kind of off topic, do you have any recommendations for studying kanji, vocabulary and/or particles? Currently, I'm ordering a set of White Rabbit Kanji Flashcards and a Kanji Poster (Also from White Rabbit) and I'm willing to buy more resources to help me (I probably won't buy anymore kanji-related resources, but I'm open to suggestions). Also, thanks for the help.
 
Well to be honest, I'm not that far ahead of you (~200 kanji right now). I spent so much time on grammar and speaking early on, I started studying kanji a little late...

I highly suggest the iOS app called Memrise for learning kanji, in addition to White Rabbit flashcards (I have vol. 1 & 2 of those cards). Memrise is free and you can study the JLPT level kanji with it, so it lets you pace yourself nicely. Otherwise, I've heard that Anki is great too (also free) but I just got it recently (haven't used it yet).
Hopefully you find these helpful!
 
Sorry for the delayed response, my internet abruptly stopped for no reason and didn't come back up until now. I'm currently using the app Memrise and yes, it is a nice learning resource as it gives you a wide variety of topics, plus it's free. I'm currently waiting on my White Rabbit Flashcards (It's hit the 1 month marker now) so I'll just have to wait a bit longer for those. I also have Anki and I've seen great reviews on it but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. I've downloaded a Kanji deck and when I start it it has different options at the bottom, for example: 'Good' 'Great' 'Bad' 'Again' 'Easy' with something like '<1m' or '4d' (I know what these stand for but i'm not sure what they do). Granted, I haven't actually taken the time to figure out how to do it, so It's kind of my fault. Anyway, thanks for the advice and good luck studying!
(I'm not sure if I should start a new blog on this, but for the kanji 上 what readings should I learn that will be the most useful as it has multiple readings? Even generally speaking, are there any kanji readings that I should watch out for that will help me out the most as opposed to another reading that I would only use once or twice?)
 
By the way I know almost all kanji have multiple readings, but the 上 kanji has 10 if I remember correctly, so I was just wondering about kanji with more than, let's say, 3/4 readings (Or however much I should learn for kanji, but currently I'm sticking with 3/4 readings).
 

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