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Japanese Kanji - Traditional and Simplified Characters

darkprince

後輩
15 Dec 2006
12
1
13
I learnt japanese during high school and have recently started learning chinese ( which is a great help in japanese ) and i want to know why does kanji use a mixture of chinese traditional and simplified characters?

Are there any kanji that were originally a traditional chinese character but now written in simplified form?
 
Japan imported kanji from China about 1000 years ago, and over time they simplified many of the characters in their own way, essentially independently of simplifications taking place in China. So there are many kanji that are not the same as traditional or simplified Chinese, for example 読 and 竜.

Japan also invented several of their own kanji. A few of these are 畑 and 働.
 
When looking at some kanji, you can see that the left side of some characters obviously gave birth to the kana symbols, as well as the right hand side.
Viewing this point, you can technically count kana as simplified 漢字. I hope those were the correct symbols for the word kanji.
じゃまた!!
 
Yes, those are the right characters. Which characters could you obviously tell became certain kana?

Actually, the phonetic use of kanji, 万葉仮名 (man'yôgana), or some variant of it, is still in use today. You see it in people's names quite frequently. For example, the female given name 友紀 uses 友 for yu and 紀 for ki. While 紀 is commonly read ki, 友 isn't commonly read yu, it's usually yû. Of course, however, these aren't the characters that became ゆ and き. But their usage is similar, even though the meaning you get from them is nice too. Actual man'yôgana, by the way, weren't used for their meanings at all, though.
 
Yeah, I got the info out of a book. Based on Kanji. It's actually no help as it doesn't give how to read any of the kanji at all. Only some parts, mainly the one I mentioned above, are actually interesting :D
じゃまた
ジョー
 
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