How to translate?

[Japholic]

well i have a simple question, i was playing around with this rosetta stone japanese program, it basicly sucks but teaches you a large vocabulary... so there is this picture of a boy and over it it says "otokonoko" so i say to myself.. ok that means "boy"

so i decide to write it. I was told that you write Japanese words with Hiragana and foreign words with Katakana or something like that.. so i go about typing it into babelfish and i get this

男の子

so does this mean boy? and what does 男 and 子 mean? i cant even find them on the hiragana/katakana charts.

 

[nice gaijin]

I explained it a couple days ago in this thread Is this sentence right? | Japan Forum

 

[Japholic]

"男 (otoko) means man, 女 (onna) means woman, and 子 (ko) means child. so 男の子 is boy and 女の子 is girl."

so if you would translate it directly you would get the word "manchild" ...

and what are these "男" "子" kanji?

 

[Damicci]

It might be ok to think of 男＝Male 女＝Female
So then you would have:
Male Child
Female Child
In this case that is.
What do you mean what are those kanji? You just quoted what they are.

 

[jonny-mt]

"男 (otoko) means man, 女 (onna) means woman, and 子 (ko) means child. so 男の子 is boy and 女の子 is girl."
so if you would translate it directly you would get the word "manchild" ...
and what are these "男" "子" kanji?

I think you're getting a little bit too literal and getting characters and words confused. Let's see if I can't straighten you out a little bit.

Kanji fall under the classification of logograms--characters in a writing system that express a concept. In your example above, 男 expresses the concept of "man" and 子 expresses the concept of "child". Therefore, we say that 男 is the character for "man" and 子 is the character for "child". Note that I'm not putting any readings because, frankly, the way you read an individual character has nothing to do with its intrinsic meaning.

Japanese words, then, are typically composed of an arrangement of said characters with readings assigned to them. So to answer your question, the "男" and "子" kanji are the characters for "man" and "child", respectively, and are used in the word 男の子, meaning "boy".

Confused yet?

 

[Japholic]

umm.. well i understand a bit. But i don't get when to use these?
in Japanese you have a phonetic writing system right? so when do i know if i am to write the word "otokonoko" with these phonetics or Kanji? and how many kanji are there really? one for each noun or something`?

i might be able to attend a very basic conversation in japanese but when it comes to writing it..

 

[nice gaijin]

umm, you probably want to consult a kanji dictionary (such as Jim Breen), as this is a big issue to tackle. Check the other threads about kanji. You should also make sure that you solidly know hiragana and katakana before jumping into kanji, it'll make things a lot easier (most dictionaries use both to tell you how to pronounce the different readings).

There are many words that use kanji, and most kanji have more than one meaning depending on how they are used. 男, by itself is read おとこ (otoko), and 子 by itself is read こ (ko) as in 男の子 (otoko no ko).

However, in certain compounds, the reading of the kanji can change that don't make a lot of sense at first glance. 男性 is like "male," but it's read "dansei," and 電子 means electron, but it's pronounced "denshi." Get hiragana and katakana down first, then check out the other threads about kanji.

 

[jonny-mt]

umm.. well i understand a bit. But i dont get when to use these?
in Japanese you have a phonetic writing system right? so when do i know if i am to write the word "otokonoko" with these phonetics or Kanji? and how many kanji are there really? one for each noun or something`?
i might be able to attent a very basic conversation in japanese but when it comes to writing it.. :?

Ah, now I get what you're after. To answer honestly, it's completely up to you when to use kanji and when to use hiragana/katakana, but that's something that you'll figure out as you develop your language skills. To offer up my personal opinion, I tend to write in a way that my sentences are easily readable. As the Wikipedia article earlier mentioned, logographic languages are often notable for the speed at which they can be read--since Japanese does not use spaces, kanji serve as a practical method for visually breaking up sentences. Take the following three examples:

わたしはちょっとともだちのところへあそびにいってくるよ。

私はちょっと友だちの所へ遊びに行ってくるよ。

私は一寸友達の所へ遊びに行って来るよ。

All three of these sentences are read the same way, and all three are correct. To a beginner who is likely reading character-by-character, the first sentence is most likely the easiest to read. Most Japanese speakers, however, will find the second sentence easiest to read as it has a good mix of kana and kanji that are effective in breaking up the sentence into easily digestible chunks, which is good when you are reading words and phrases at a glance. Incidentally, that is not the only way to do it; it's just the way I chose (友達のところへ is also a good choice imho).

The third sentence, however, is a little too cluttered to read, having used kanji virtually wherever possible. It's certainly readable, but it might cause someone to pause along the way.

As for your question as to how many kanji there are, the answer is a lot. Almost any proper word has a kanji character (or several) associated with it, but which ones are actually used is another question. Government documents are limited by law to use the 1,945 Jouyou Kanji for words and the 983 Jinmei-you Kanji for names, and many newspapers generally follow the same guidelines. However, the Jouyou Kanji are a bit outdated, providing such anachronisms as ほか being an unacceptable pronunciation for 他 (the correct Jouyou character is 外) while words such as 朕(ちん, a term once used only by the Emperor to refer to himself) remain on the list, so this should not be seen as the be-all end-all of kanji lists.

For right now, then, you need to focus on what is readable to you and learn the basic vocabulary rather than worry about kanji just yet. If you can pick one or two up now, though, then go for it, because I can guarantee that the words you're learning will use those characters.