Kanji are the characters from China that were adapted into the Japanese language.
Basically, this is where it becomes hell. Buckle up.
Kanji is pictographic— instead of each character representing a sound (kana), these merely represent ideas.
人 - person
日 - sun/day
月 - moon/month
火 - fire
水 - water
口 - mouth
木 - tree
These ones kinda look like the ideas we are trying to communicate, right? Especially the tree and person. But as we get into the more abstract and non-physical ideas, the weirder it gets.
弟 - little brother
思 - thinking
赤 - red
前 - before
友 - friend
家 - home
飛 - flying
How daunting...
So, it may look like a messy hodge-podge right now, which, it kind of is, but once it's broken down into easily digestible components, you will start to get the hang of it, and notice some really cool patterns and crap.
All kanji are made up of tinier characters called radicals. These radicals are the simple ideas that we use to make the more complicated ones. There are... 214 of them. And with these, you can make the 50,000+ kanji documented. Don't worry though, an average Japanese adult only knows about 2,000-3,000. For comparison, we English speakers cap in everyday vocabulary at about 20,000.
Every kanji in the first set I gave you were some very basic radicals. Let's combine some of them to make new kanji.
人 + 木 = 休 - rest
日 + 月 = 明 - brightness
木 + 口 = 杏 - apricot
火 + 火 = 炎 - blaze
*Note that some radicals alter slightly when being combined, as with 人 in 休. In this case, 人 would be considered in the left position. (イ) The number and kind of positions depend on the radical. Just bear with me here, I know...
So the real challenge with kanji is the readings. How do we pronounce them? Well, it's not that easy, you see...
人 - ひと、じん、にん
日 - ひ、にち、か
月 - つき、げつ、がつ
火 - ひ、か、び、ほ
水 - みず、すい
口 - くち、うあ、く
木 - き、もく、ぼく、こ
...yeah, it's not a walk in the koen with this...
Kanji have two different types of readings: Onyomi (音読み) and Kunyomi (訓読み). Onyomi is the original Chinese pronunciation (漢 - ハン), whereas Kunyomi is the adapted Japanese pronunciation (漢 - かん). Each are used to make different words.
歌 - うた - song (訓読み)
歌手 - かしゅ - singer (音読み)
中 - なか - middle (訓読み)
中国 - ちゅうごく- China (音読み)
The worst part is that there's really no trick to figuring out which reading to use. You more or less just have to memorize.
Well, let's review what you know already!
日
口
水
赤
明
漢字
歌手
中国
ぎゅうにゅう
ともだち
うた
きょう
ゆっくり
ゆったり
わたし
けいさつかん
コンピュータ
カラオケ
ペラペラ
ビール
フラッグ
クリスマス
ドイツ
ゴロゴロ
Heh, I snuck in a few new words for you in the kanas!
きょう - kyou - today
ゆっくり - yukkuri - slowly
ゆったり - yuttari - comfortably
わたし - watashi - I/me
ペラペラ - pera pera - fluent/talkative
フラッグ - furaggu - flag
クリスマス - kurisumasu - Christmas
ドイツ - doitsu - Germany
ゴロゴロ - goro goro - (the sound of) rolling
Till next time!
