Ashikaga
もちもちした食感
- 19 Feb 2008
- 2,220
- 84
Wow, that's random. Are you like into martial arts or something that requires these two ? lol
なぜこの言葉が必要なんでしょうか？武術に夢中ですか ？
Video Games, Elizabeth!! lol
The Kanji Appreciation Thread
- Thread starter leonmarino
- Start date
Video Games, Elizabeth!! lol
tada
変わってる
- 23 Jun 2008
- 594
- 3
wow, That's Random. Are You Like Into Martial Arts Or Something That Requires These Two ? Lol
なぜこの言葉が必要なんでしょうか？武術に夢中ですか？
いいえ、武術をしない。始まるように、僕が年を取りすぎた。ぜんぜん上手になることが出来ない。＿|￣|○
そして、「ひつ」の読みがなんだか楽しい。(笑)
Elizabeth
先輩
- 22 Apr 2003
- 9,839
- 135
Tadasan no sukina ji wa doredemo erande mo ii desune.
Demo 必 to iu ji ha kaite mita koto ga aru ??? Totemo kakinikui kanji desune. Machigatte oboete kudasai. 
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I guess this post belongs here. Its a short article that I wrote, pointing out differences between hand-written kanji and their computer font cousins.
Beyond Calligraphy | Blog | Hand-written Chinese characters vs. computer font.
Beyond Calligraphy | Blog | Hand-written Chinese characters vs. computer font.
Does anyone study history of Japanese language here? Most people tell me (and I've searched on internet) that Japanese Kanji is just basically simplified/modified Han Chinese (and amusingly, sometimes they copied over the wrong spelling of a word since they can't read the handwriting) from the Sui, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties when they sent lots of scholars over to China to study the culture. In fact the word "Kanji", written as 假名 or 假字, literally means "fake language" or "duplicate language". Is this accurate? Either way for a Chinese like me it's made it 1/3 easier to study Japanese since I automatically know the Kanji lol.
- 22 Feb 2008
- 18,266
- 4,926
假名/假字 is "kana", not kanji. Kanji is written 漢字, which literally means "Han Character", probably as you can understand. Although the antonym of 假名 is 真名.
I do study it. To understand the evolution of the Chinese writing system you need to read a bit more than just what is on the net, which in many cases is hogwash, to put it gently. The evolution of hanzi in China was mainly affected by a huge territory, hence distances, numerous conflicts between many clans and kingdoms, and their will to differentiate themselves from one another (which process included the writing system).
The term Hanzi is Chinese, not Japanese, and it is only read differently in Japanese, and it emphasizes the appreciation for the Han dynasty people's contribution to the development of Chinese writing. Even though the art of calligraphy reached its peak during Tang period (about 500 years later), the Han dynasty is considered a cradle of modern Chinese writing.
Now, the Japanese kanji are not simplified Chinese characters, and to understand the complexity of the whole process of incorporating foreign writing system will be rather difficult without reading about both languages first. And if you are indeed Chinese as you say, I am rather shocked to read how little you know about the culture of your own country, though I strongly suspect that you were born outside China, in which case it is a different story.
You can start reading here:
History of Chinese Calligraphy - Beyond Calligraphy
I wrote there quite a lot about the history, and then you can jump to Japanese calligraphy, here
History of Japanese Calligraphy - Beyond Calligraphy
- 3 Jan 2012
- 842
- 9
The Kanji I actually like the most because I found out by myself is 互 which means mutual.
''Two hands, one from the upper corner and one from under corner, are connected to each other, which is actually a bind''.
''Two hands, one from the upper corner and one from under corner, are connected to each other, which is actually a bind''.
undrentide
Japa'n vagyok
- 18 Jan 2006
- 3,652
- 310
Ha ha, it's one of the 'I-can-read-but-never-be-able-to-write' kanji for most Japanese besides 薔薇 and 憂鬱.
I only just very recently started to teach myself kanji and Japanese as a whole so I only know like the first ten symbols at grade 1 (10+ down, another 2490+ to go lol) with a few that searched for to help make my simple sentences look better.
I always thought that kanji would make sentences harder to read when actually I found it made them much easier to look at rather than having to piece together a bunch of hiragana characters. I like the way that kanji symbols kind of look like what they are portraying and how they make the object/idea names stand out from the sentence. I love how you can get that general idea of what someone is talking about just by giving the kanji a quick glance (Assuming that I know the symbols).
I'm not sure what my favourite symbol(s) are yet but I'd say 生物学 because this introduced me to Kanji (I was learning how to introduce myself and decided to try to introduce kanji) and I saw how the symbols look like what they are portraying, a tree, an animal and a head filling with ideas (Life form study). I later learned about radicals and how the second symbol radicals are 'cow' and 'not apparent' meaning "not like a cow"; other words more like thing/object rather than an animal (Correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyway, I hope I'm made sense somewhere along the lines.
I always thought that kanji would make sentences harder to read when actually I found it made them much easier to look at rather than having to piece together a bunch of hiragana characters. I like the way that kanji symbols kind of look like what they are portraying and how they make the object/idea names stand out from the sentence. I love how you can get that general idea of what someone is talking about just by giving the kanji a quick glance (Assuming that I know the symbols).
I'm not sure what my favourite symbol(s) are yet but I'd say 生物学 because this introduced me to Kanji (I was learning how to introduce myself and decided to try to introduce kanji) and I saw how the symbols look like what they are portraying, a tree, an animal and a head filling with ideas (Life form study). I later learned about radicals and how the second symbol radicals are 'cow' and 'not apparent' meaning "not like a cow"; other words more like thing/object rather than an animal (Correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyway, I hope I'm made sense somewhere along the lines.
- 22 Feb 2008
- 18,266
- 4,926
According to a kanji dictionary 新字源, 勿 oroginally expressed "the sound to cut something" or "to cut something". So, 物 originally meant "chopped cow (to offer a sacrifice to the gods)" and changed its meaning to "a sacrifice" --> "things people use" / "things that exist".
BrianLewis
先輩
- 27 Nov 2012
- 317
- 33
Firefox should have a few plugins for that. I can't say I have ever used them.
Nulambda
Kouhai
- 14 Jul 2014
- 60
- 1
With every word I learn, I've been learning the kanji of it along side it. Interestingly enough, I usually end up learning the kanji before the word itself. It might have to do with me being a more visual person. Though, sometimes various small parts of the kanji are easy for me to mix up. Usually, in order to help me learn, I end up making up names for various parts of the kanji. I call 亠 a hat. 宀 is a hat with a brim. 丶 is a feather. And so on. I'm always interested in the origin of each kanji, but a lot of them are very abstract concepts.
- 27 Apr 2014
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Those "parts" are called radicals, and indeed they're very useful for memorizing kanji. In fact there are many kanji learning lists that focus on the radical breakdown of each character.
And not only that, it also helps in situations where you're looking at an unknown kanji in a place where you can't copy-paste it to an electronic dictionary and can't scan it with an OCR tool: in those cases, you can input the radicals you recognize into a radical-based search engine like Jisho.org, and find the kanji that way.
Back on topic: my favorite kanji has to be 茶. One of the precious few simple, symmetrical characters. Somehow it's just nice to look at.
And not only that, it also helps in situations where you're looking at an unknown kanji in a place where you can't copy-paste it to an electronic dictionary and can't scan it with an OCR tool: in those cases, you can input the radicals you recognize into a radical-based search engine like Jisho.org, and find the kanji that way.
Back on topic: my favorite kanji has to be 茶. One of the precious few simple, symmetrical characters. Somehow it's just nice to look at.
- 15 Mar 2002
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Tell us what it means, please.
