To better understand Kanji (Very important to me)

The questions I ask need to be as truthful and friendly as possible because this thread will determine for me if I really want to continue learning Japanese.

To be honest the main reason I started to try and learn Japanese was because I was first learning Chinese characters and found out that Japanese have Kanji and wanted to see which language is better for me. I am starting to lean more to Chinese but I am not trying to say Chinese is an overall better language than Japanese for other people, just in my opinion it is for me. I already knew that the Japanese kanji is chinese based, has some different character combinations, different meanings, characters that are not in Chinese, and are written sometimes differently. However, I have come to learn there is more to the Japanese Kanji than just learning different meanings and different character combinations and etc.

Please, someone answer these questions.

1. Did the Japanese one day decide to change the chinese character meanings on purpose or did the character meanings change naturally over time?

2. How much of Kanji is "true" chinese? I am only talking about Kanji itself. For a person studing both written languages I'd say its only about 30%-40% true chinese with the same character combinations and meanings, but does anyone else know better than me at what percent?

3. The Chinese use their characters in a way so it does not matter what language you speak, you can read another language's writing when the characters mean the same thing even if the sentence structure is different. However after looking at Japanese, the Japanese don't seem to be using Kanji this way and seem to be only using it for their own language and not for any foreign language speakers to understand their language better. Is this true?

4. The Kanji seems to have more rules and restrictions when using them and do not seem as flexible as in Chinese. This would have to mean the only proper way to write Kanji is to be able to actually speak Japanese unlike Chinese in which you don't have to speak any Chinese language. Is this true even though Kanji is not phonetic and short phrases can sometimes be written only in Kanji?

5. I have a very hard time learning Japanese words and remembering them and their meanings. I HAVE tried but I am just not good at this. I can remember Kanji much better and I was hoping I could over come my hiragana problem by using kanji and mostly katakana and only use hiragana as sentence structure(which I can learn for hiragana, maybe) to write Japanese, which you "can" do it seems and I have asked here before. My biggest problem is that the Japanese only use 2000 kanji and it's hardly enough to use for my writing style even though 2000 seems like a lot, it just doesn't seem enough. Also it seems that if you write this way you have to be very careful when writing it. I can write this style(and maybe only this style) if I REALLY try to learn this language but I don't know if it is worth it or maybe it's too hard for this style.

6. 2000 Kanji characters makes it more possible to learn every single one of them which is good but it seems you can't be as specific with things with Japanese Kanji than you can in Chinese because of the lack of characters. The hiragana fixes this problem right? Or is 2000 kanji enough to get your meaning understood properly?

I have some more questions but I want people to clear these questions I have up first with me.

It sounds almost like you're a deaf person treating the language as something totally visual. I say that because it sounds like you're trying to remember Japanese words represented in hiragana as visual objects rather than as a means of representing the sounds of the words. That would drive anybody nuts.

Japanese borrowed kanji from various regions of China and over an extended period of time, in the process adopting readings from different dialects of Chinese. That accounts for kanji often having several on'yomi. Are you familiar with the expression "pounding a round peg into a square hole"? That's what the process of adopting kanji for use with the Japanese language was like. I think many people assume because of kanji that there is some relation between the two languages structurally. Guess what? There isn't.

You started (like so many these days) on totally the wrong end of the problem: attempting to learn kanji before and independent of learning the language. That's a sure-fire recipe for frustration and failure.

If you have no particular genuine need for learning Japanese then there is little sense to beating yourself up keeping at it. Go learn Chinese instead. Just make sure that you don't repeat the same sort of errors that have accompanied your attempt at self-learning Japanese.

EDIT:

Another reason it seems to you like there is more to the kanji use in Japanese is what I have harped on repeatedly and which everybody ignores: LEARNING KANJI IS NOT LEARNING JAPANESE.

Japanese is a language. Kanji are part of a system for representing the language in writing.

Believe it or not, there are blind people in Japan who speak Japanese perfectly fine despite never having seen a kanji in their life. Get off your kanji hang-up and learn the language properly, picking up kanji in context as your textbook introduces them. Your total fixation on kanji is going to doom your efforts to learn Japanese to failure as you are totally unable to distinguish between a language and its writing system.

whoa calm down... I said in my first post please in a friendly way explain to me. I can understand you trying to make a SOLID point but don't be too harsh. OK. calm down. If too many people are asking what I ask can't you pin something on the board so everyone sees it to avoid confusion? Also I HAVE looked at hiragana books and studied them ever since you told me too. I have practiced writing hiragana for hours and CAN write things/spell things/ and find hiragana spelling mistakes in hiragana from books I studied but it is just hard for me to memorize the actual japanese words. I also have this trouble in Chinese too with this.

Mike if you keep posting like this when people are kindly asking for help you are going to discourage a lot of people from learning. Even if I am still new to this forum and you want to make a point. Also if you don't like repeating yourself why do you keep post and responding to people like that?

You are not alone in finding it hard to remember Japanese words. I think they are less memorable than words in many other languages, presumably because there are fewer sound combinations, so many combinations are reused over and over again. I can normally read words in kanji better than I can read the same words in hiragana because I recognise the characters better than I remember the sounds. For example, take some random example like しちょう. I just look at that and think huh, what? Which of the hundreds of different things that し and ちょう can mean would that be? But if I see 視聴 or 市長 then I know they are, respectively, the characters for "look + listen" and "city + chief", so I get the general meaning pretty easily. Of course, this is no use for the spoken language.

I'm not sure I would quite put it that hiragana "fixes the problem" of there being fewer characters in regular use than in Chinese, but it's true that when there's no kanji for a word, or only an obscure one that maybe you don't know, then you can write it in hiragana. By the way, that ~2000 number refers to the "Joyo kanji", but in reality I think most adult native speakers would know substantially more than that. Even in some of the learners' textbook materials that I use, they slip in some non-Joyo kanji.

As you probably know, many of the grammatical "nuts and bolts" of the language, and many short common words and elements, have no kanji (or possibly a theoretical kanji than no one actually ever uses), so are always written in hiragana.

Thank you for sharing that with me. It bothers me that many people and things say Japanese is the over all easier language to learn than chinese but no its not... When I wrote my first paragraph in chinese with the help of google translate(and believe it or not google translate is actually good for something, and I only used it to get the chinese character font) my paragraph was completely understandable and easy to read. For Chinese that is something so "hard" to learn it is much easier for people to understand your writing and I HARDLY make "mistakes" when writing Chinese. I do mess up once in awhile but it is still over all understandable. Since Japanese is not like this I have finally come to realize that everyone is different and learn languages differently and some better than others even if something the majority of people find "harder."

Well my Japanese language learning experience wasn't a total waste, I did learn Katakana very well and can read most katakana words and got more knowledge about how the Japanese lanugage works than knowing nothing but I think I'll focus more on Chinese for right now. Thanks for anyone that tried to help me.

I never told you to "look at hiragana books". I've never told anyone to look at hiragana books. I suggested getting a proper beginning level textbook and focus on learning the language and pick up kanji as the textbook introduces them. The first books I learned from were for a college level course and the text for the whole first year of material was presented in....gasp!....romaji! Despite the dire warnings you will universally receive admonishing you to dive right into the kana, it didn't hurt me or hold back my progress one little bit.

The problem you encountered, and which for some reason I seem utterly incapable of making you understand, is that at this point in your Japanese learning (which quite frankly is still Lesson 1) kanji shouldn't even be on your radar. They should be the farthest thing from your mind. Yet, they are apparently the only thing you're interested in. Since fitting kanji onto the Japanese language was very much a force-fit proposition, there are lots of things about it that seem very quirky....if you don't know the language. If you have been learning from good materials which present kanji in context as you go progress in your studies, then there is nothing particularly hard about it at all. What you are asking in this thread is the equivalent of someone who hasn't yet learned the rudiments of grade-school math asking, "Explain algebra to me". Would you care to try to explain algebra to somebody who hasn't learned to add and subtract single digit numbers yet? Would you have any hopes of making yourself understood? Would you feel there was any point to it? That's about the same situation as our trying to explain all the stuff about kanji to you when you haven't yet learned even the simplest rudimentary elements of beginning Japanese yet.

And for what it is worth, I am not some sort of salesman or ambassador for the Japanese language. I gain nothing if you do study Japanese and I lose nothing if you don't study Japanese. It makes no difference to me. I state my opinions and give my advice entirely without thought to whether it is going to encourage or discourage anyone. Not my job and I really don't give a damn one way or the other. I regret that my attempts to help fell upon deaf ears, but anyone actually heeding my advice regarding anything whatsoever would be a novelty. I am quite used to p*ssing in the wind by now.

Mike Cash said:

I never told you to "look at hiragana books". I've never told anyone to look at hiragana books. I suggested getting a proper beginning level textbook and focus on learning the language and pick up kanji as the textbook introduces them. The first books I learned from were for a college level course and the text for the whole first year of material was presented in....gasp!....romaji! Despite the dire warnings you will universally receive admonishing you to dive right into the kana, it didn't hurt me or hold back my progress one little bit.

The problem you encountered, and which for some reason I seem utterly incapable of making you understand, is that at this point in your Japanese learning (which quite frankly is still Lesson 1) kanji shouldn't even be on your radar. They should be the farthest thing from your mind. Yet, they are apparently the only thing you're interested in. Since fitting kanji onto the Japanese language was very much a force-fit proposition, there are lots of things about it that seem very quirky....if you don't know the language. If you have been learning from good materials which present kanji in context as you go progress in your studies, then there is nothing particularly hard about it at all. What you are asking in this thread is the equivalent of someone who hasn't yet learned the rudiments of grade-school math asking, "Explain algebra to me". Would you care to try to explain algebra to somebody who hasn't learned to add and subtract single digit numbers yet? Would you have any hopes of making yourself understood? Would you feel there was any point to it? That's about the same situation as our trying to explain all the stuff about kanji to you when you haven't yet learned even the simplest rudimentary elements of beginning Japanese yet.

And for what it is worth, I am not some sort of salesman or ambassador for the Japanese language. I gain nothing if you do study Japanese and I lose nothing if you don't study Japanese. It makes no difference to me. I state my opinions and give my advice entirely without thought to whether it is going to encourage or discourage anyone. Not my job and I really don't give a damn one way or the other. I regret that my attempts to help fell upon deaf ears, but anyone actually heeding my advice regarding anything whatsoever would be a novelty. I am quite used to p*ssing in the wind by now.

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Your first two paragraphs are perfectly fine but your last paragraph is uncalled for. I looked through your post history and it's HORRIBLE and your posts are that of an internet tough guy(LOL). Any normal thinking person that didn't like a person's posts wouldn't respond to them or add them to an ignore list but from your "post history" it is clear you LIKE stuff like this. Even if I did from now on take your "advice" there is no way I would want help from a guy that has trouble talking politely. Since I am a normal thinking person I am adding you to my ignore list and I suggest you do the same.

Speedy9199 said:

Thank you for sharing that with me. It bothers me that many people and things say Japanese is the over all easier language to learn than chinese but no its not... When I wrote my first paragraph in chinese with the help of google translate(and believe it or not google translate is actually good for something, and I only used it to get the chinese character font) my paragraph was completely understandable and easy to read.

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I don't know any Chinese (other than recognising some characters because they are the same as Japanese), so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Chinese has as much grammar as Japanese (or English or many other languages), and one word normally corresponds to one character, and sentences are made pretty much just by plonking one word (character) after another in some kind of sensible order, and then you're done. As you say, Japanese is not like that. And the only reason they use kanji is a historical accident really.

Speedy9199 said:

Your first two paragraphs are perfectly fine but your last paragraph is uncalled for. I looked through your post history and it's HORRIBLE and your posts are that of an internet tough guy(LOL). Any normal thinking person that didn't like a person's posts wouldn't respond to them or add them to an ignore list but from your "post history" it is clear you LIKE stuff like this. Even if I did from now on take your "advice" there is no way I would want help from a guy that has trouble talking politely. Since I am a normal thinking person I am adding you to my ignore list and I suggest you do the same.

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I wish I had had seen this last night instead of first thing in the morning. Then I could have cried myself to sleep.

eeky said:

I don't know any Chinese (other than recognising some characters because they are the same as Japanese), so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Chinese has as much grammar as Japanese (or English or many other languages), and one word normally corresponds to one character, and sentences are made pretty much just by plonking one word (character) after another in some kind of sensible order, and then you're done. As you say, Japanese is not like that. And the only reason they use kanji is a historical accident really.

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Ask that same question in the chinese section.

Speedy9199 said:

5. I have a very hard time learning Japanese words and remembering them and their meanings. I HAVE tried but I am just not good at this. I can remember Kanji much better and I was hoping I could over come my hiragana problem by using kanji and mostly katakana and only use hiragana as sentence structure(which I can learn for hiragana, maybe) to write Japanese, which you "can" do it seems and I have asked here before. My biggest problem is that the Japanese only use 2000 kanji and it's hardly enough to use for my writing style even though 2000 seems like a lot, it just doesn't seem enough. Also it seems that if you write this way you have to be very careful when writing it. I can write this style(and maybe only this style) if I REALLY try to learn this language but I don't know if it is worth it or maybe it's too hard for this style.

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Are you actually saying that Japanese doesn't have enough characters for your writing style. Who are you? Shakespeare?

Japanese don't seem to be using Kanji this way and seem to be only using it for their own language and not for any foreign language speakers to understand their language better. Is this true?

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Languages develop for the use of native speakers; foreign language speakers have nothing to do with anything. The Japanese writing system developed in an era when hardly anyone in the world learnt foreign languages; most people couldn't even read and write their own languages, be it English, Russian, Chinese or Japanese.
Why would the Japanese 'use Kanji' in a way that makes it easier for foreign language speakers? They don't care if spotty teenagers in the US find it difficult to understand their imported Japanese Pokemon Gold. Surely their main concern is, you know, their own language.
It's like saying "why don't the English reform their language's irregular spelling and write everything phonetically to make it easier for foreigners to learn it?"

eeky said:

By the way, that ~2000 number refers to the "Joyo kanji", but in reality I think most adult native speakers would know substantially more than that. Even in some of the learners' textbook materials that I use, they slip in some non-Joyo kanji.

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What's with people assume Japanese people know more than the 2136 Joyo kanji? In my Kanken report, the pass rate for Kanken level 2 (which is the level for all the 2136 Joyo) is a mere 23% . 23% for people who studied and sat for the exam. Base on this fact, what is the probability of the pass rate for whole of Japan's adult population, probably 5% of the population or less.

So only a very minority of the Japanese population even know the full Joyo kanji list.

The pass rate for Kanken Pre level 1 is 15%, this is a 3000 kanji level test.
The pass rate for Kanken level 4 (1322 kanji) is 50%.

As you can see, most Japanese's kanji ability is quite poor if you use Joyo as a bench mark.

Guregori said:

Are you actually saying that Japanese doesn't have enough characters for your writing style. Who are you? Shakespeare?

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Shakespear used 20,000 english words for a fact.

A language that uses 2000 Kanji characters for a part of their writing that is not phonetic is pretty much the bare minimum for a language that uses not phonetic characters. I mean, "most" languages use around 100,000-300,000 words, English has 600,000 words X_X. For only 2000 characters and even with combining characters together that's hardly enough, unless Japanese has very few words in their dictionary or something. I will say for something that is good about Kanji, is that it IS much more possible to learn all of them AND recognize them. I have found that you see the same kanji A LOT over and over again which makes remembering them easier. In chinese no matter how many characters you know you'll just never know all of them and the same characters don't appear as often, but knowing all of them is like remembering every word in the English dictionary(which actually seems harder to do in fact). With fewer things to work with(in this case kanji) it's harder to get the meaning you exactly want when using only/mostly kanji. You would have to look at Chinese to understand this a bit better.

To be honest I would not complain about the kanji if the Kanji count was around 4000 or 5000 or so but maybe it's better for only 2000 for people that can't remember things as good. I have a friend in real life that took a Japanese class and could only remember 250 or so Kanji. The Kanji number count is both a good thing and a bad thing in ways.

Your cluelessness knows no bounds.

I am not going to view the above post from the person on my ignore list because I know it will be garbage >_>

Oh, it was insulting....but accurate.

Dynamite couldn't blast that "Kanji is Japanese, Japanese is kanji" ignorance out of your head.

Speedy9199 said:

Shakespear used 20,000 english words for a fact.

A language that uses 2000 Kanji characters for a part of their writing that is not phonetic is pretty much the bare minimum for a language that uses not phonetic characters. I mean, "most" languages use around 100,000-300,000 words, English has 600,000 words X_X. For only 2000 characters and even with combining characters together that's hardly enough, unless Japanese has very few words in their dictionary or something. I will say for something that is good about Kanji, is that it IS much more possible to learn all of them AND recognize them. I have found that you see the same kanji A LOT over and over again which makes remembering them easier. In chinese no matter how many characters you know you'll just never know all of them and the same characters don't appear as often, but knowing all of them is like remembering every word in the English dictionary(which actually seems harder to do in fact). With fewer things to work with(in this case kanji) it's harder to get the meaning you exactly want when using only/mostly kanji. You would have to look at Chinese to understand this a bit better.

To be honest I would not complain about the kanji if the Kanji count was around 4000 or 5000 or so but maybe it's better for only 2000 for people that can't remember things as good. I have a friend in real life that took a Japanese class and could only remember 250 or so Kanji. The Kanji number count is both a good thing and a bad thing in ways.

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dumbest thing I read in a long time...

you used 600 000 words in English to compare with 2000 Joyo Kanji??

Why not compared it will all the 50 000 kanji and 530 000 Kanji compound words in Daikanwa?

600 000 and 530 000 (not even counting hiragana only and katakana words), that's pretty equal to me.

FinancialWar said:

What's with people assume Japanese people know more than the 2136 Joyo kanji? In my Kanken report, the pass rate for Kanken level 2 (which is the level for all the 2136 Joyo) is a mere 23% . 23% for people who studied and sat for the exam. Base on this fact, what is the probability of the pass rate for whole of Japan's adult population, probably 5% of the population or less.

So only a very minority of the Japanese population even know the full Joyo kanji list.

The pass rate for Kanken Pre level 1 is 15%, this is a 3000 kanji level test.
The pass rate for Kanken level 4 (1322 kanji) is 50%.

As you can see, most Japanese's kanji ability is quite poor if you use Joyo as a bench mark.

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I find this very surprising. The figure I've seen touted in a few places elsewhere is that the average reasonably well educated Japanese adult knows maybe 3000 - 4000 kanji. Could anyone else comment?

eeky said:

I find this very surprising. The figure I've seen touted in a few places elsewhere is that the average reasonably well educated Japanese adult knows maybe 3000 - 4000 kanji. Could anyone else comment?

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eeky, it is frustrating to read a post with ridiculous claims but no evidence. We really shouldn't have to ask this but can you give us the source of the "figure" please? "A few places elsewhere" is very vague and doesn't help your case.

Although this is not an university and you're not writing an thesis where one is required to have Harvard referencing. But some evidence or link would be great in helping your claim and thus helping us to make a more informed opinion.

FinancialWar said:

dumbest thing I read in a long time...

you used 600 000 words in English to compare with 2000 Joyo Kanji??

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Err... I never directly said or meant that comparison. I was just saying how many words languages usually have incase anyone doesn't know.

FinancialWar said:

What's with people assume Japanese people know more than the 2136 Joyo kanji? In my Kanken report, the pass rate for Kanken level 2 (which is the level for all the 2136 Joyo) is a mere 23% . 23% for people who studied and sat for the exam. Base on this fact, what is the probability of the pass rate for whole of Japan's adult population, probably 5% of the population or less.
So only a very minority of the Japanese population even know the full Joyo kanji list.
The pass rate for Kanken Pre level 1 is 15%, this is a 3000 kanji level test.
The pass rate for Kanken level 4 (1322 kanji) is 50%.
As you can see, most Japanese's kanji ability is quite poor if you use Joyo as a bench mark.

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One of my university professors once said that most Japanese people know about 3-4000 kanji. Those kanji tests are incredibly in depth and require an absurd amount of knowledge about each and every kanji so it's not that surprising that most people have trouble passing the tests covering just the joyo characters. Most Japanese people may not be able to look at many kanji out of context and tell you their meanings or readings or even write them, but may be able to read words that use them in context. If only 23% of people knew the joyo kanji, then most Japanese people wouldn't be able to read the newspaper.

Speedy9199 said:

For only 2000 characters and even with combining characters together that's hardly enough, unless Japanese has very few words in their dictionary or something.

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Seriously....kanji are NOT words. They are KANJI. They FORM words on paper or your screen. Without the other two writing systems, hiragana and katakana, you would have an unreadable mess. Yes, many nouns can be written with kanji alone, but that doesn't make those kanji, in and of themselves, words.

For example:
ﾅ津淒津｣ - PM
ﾅ津｣ - after
ﾅ津｣窶堙ｫ - behind

All of these contain the kanji ﾅ津｣. But it requires context and the surrounding characters to determine what the meaning is. In a way, although kanji offer some intrinsic meaning (though you tell me how the kanji in 窶｢ﾃ吮?懌? mean "lunchbox"), they are in some ways just a very complex alphabet (don't you dare even bring up the definition of an alphabet; I'm making a point here).

Therefore if you want to compare Japanese to English, kanji would compare to the alphabet. Last I checked, the English alphabet only has 26 letters. Japanese has its 2000+ standard kanji + 45 hiragana + 45 katakana. Do you have any idea how many words you could form with that many characters? If you stick solely to 4 character long words only using basic hiragana or katakana you could potentially have over 4 MILLION words! In contrast, there could only be around 460,000 4 letter words in English.

Kanji are simply used to make reading easier, they clear up the difference between homophones, and are useful when taking a word out of context (such as on a sign). I love kanji, but kanji are NOT words.

Honestly, your attitude towards Japanese in this thread has been a bit disrespectful in my opinion.

I'll scoot over some, Angel, and make room on the wall for you to bang your head on it too. Never mind the bloodstains; those are mine and I'll clean them up later.

I'm going to go get some popcorn. This is actually turning out to be pretty entertaining.

FinancialWar said:

eeky, it is frustrating to read a post with ridiculous claims but no evidence.

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More likely your ideas are "ridiculous". As AV says, if only 23% of people knew the joyo kanji, then most Japanese people wouldn't be able to read a newspaper.

eeky said:

As AV says, if only 23% of people knew the joyo kanji, then most Japanese people wouldn't be able to read a newspaper.

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Great!

By you two standard. I can now claim to know all the Joyo kanji since I can read Japanese newspaper and figure out the Kanji meaning since I'm Chinese, even though I have no chance of passing Kanken 2.
All educated Chinese people now "know" all the Joyo kanjis too.
Of course, reading newspaper is a more accurate test of one's Kanji proficiency than Kanji Kentei.