Explain Kanji in 5 minutes challenge.

[ax]

This is a competition thread. How would you explain Kanji to a complete greenhorn so that they can have a a headstart to cut down their learning curve. Ignite their interest and curiosity in Kanji and map their abecedararian thinking pattern into the alchemy of graphical kanji elements. Let me write my draft first, and I shall submit it on my next post in this thread. To other Kanji maestro out there, hope you guys can give your own analogies and metaphors.

アクス

 

[PaulTB]

Explain Kanji in 5 minutes challenge.

Kanji is what Japanese is written in when it isn't written in hiragana, katakana or romaji.

(I'll let somebody else use the remaining 4minutes 48 seconds to explain what hiragana, katakana and romaji are).

 

[nemesae]

Kanji is an ideographic writing consisting of various radicals per symbol. Once these are learnt you will find that you can copy about any kanji, able to analyse them how they were put together (or at least to a certain degree) and much easier to understand for those who have dyslexia (or however you write that in english ^^ Plus you will be able to translate random things such as the names of Chinese restaurants and so, which will surely give you a few laughing fits being able to read what's printed on modern-day shirts

Something like that?

 

[lexico]

Kanji refers to the Chinese charcters imported to Japan which can stand for any number of Japanese syllables written in hiragana.

(Whoever's reading, you have the remaining 4 mins 45 secs to explain the origin, the evolution, the 6 Warring States' scripts, the 8 Qin scripts, the 6 Han scripts, the 6 principles of character formation, the 8 strokes of calligraphy, the rebus principle of non-sense words, the 108 rhyming categories, go'on, kan'on, tou'on, kun'yomi, kokuji, simplification, the 6,000 JIS characters, and the 80,000 non-JIS characters, and the evolution into Manyo kana, katakana, and hiragana. Thank you.)

 

[Mycernius]

Kanji is a series of stylised pictographs used in Japan. In some cases there are easy to learn in other cases they might take a little bit more time. That's the fun part. You can use the remaining 5 minutes to to look up more complex text on this forum, other websites or order a book from amazon

BTW I am a virtual greenhorn at kanji

 

[lexico]

You sure don't sound like a greenhorn, Mycernius!
But I really wonder how you went from 4 mins 45 secs back to 5 mins.
Sorcery automatically rules you out of the game. Ha!
Not only that, the head of your Church can have you under inquisition, torture, burning on the cross, or excommunication for that kind of offense, which guarantees you no legal protection whatsoever.
Edit, edit, before it's too late!

 

[Mycernius]

oops, should have said the remainder of the 5 minutes. My bad, but I have had a beer and two large glasses of red wine (mmmm! Red wine)

 

[TwistedMac]

"kanji is crazy. You'll never get it, give up now."
What do I win?

 

[lexico]

oops, should have said the remainder of the 5 minutes. My bad, but I have had a beer and two large glasses of red wine (mmmm! Red wine)

I absolve you of your little blemish, the blame is on the Red devil, then.
Burn him!