Here we are on a very important course where we are going to recap all we have seen so far about kana and kanji. We’re not really going to learn anything new; this course is just about learning how to analyze kanji. I don’t remember if I already told you (or maybe I already said in the FAQ) but understanding a language is very important.
Understand a language means understand how that language works, why one element works this way and not another and how the language was built because I think, with certainty, that it facilitates understanding and learning. And this course on advanced kanji analysis is here to help you better understand hiragana, katakana and kanji. So, read carefully.
I’m not hiding from you that this course will be long, longer than usual but everything we are going to see is very important so read everything that follows.
The first thing I would like to point out to you is a little difference in pronunciation between purely Japanese readings and Sino-Japanese readings. Let’s start with purely Japanese readings :
きた
みなみ
ひがし
にし
うみ
さかな
すな
くに
みやこ
Good. Now let’s see the Sino-Japanese readings :
ホク
ナン
トウ
セイ
カイ
ギョ
オウ
コク
キョウ
ホン
チュウ
ニチ
Do you notice that we have a notable difference between all these purely Japanese readings and all these Sino-Japanese readings ?
The first point is that Sino-Japanese pronunciations are very often composed of two syllables. Since the Chinese pronunciations were monosyllabic, when they were katakanized, the Japanese were left with pronunciations made up of two syllables. For example :
ホク
トウ
セイ
カイ
コク
Then, from time to time, we will find combinations that are very common in Sino-Japanese :
キョウ
チュウ
Purely Japanese readings, if we observe them carefully are very often made up of two, three, sometimes four syllables, and are made up of basic kana. So, we never have combinations nor lengthenings. Observe well :
きた
みなみ
ひがし
にし
うみ
さかな
Note that, from time to time, we have accents as in ひがし. We have the が which is also a basic kana entirely independent of the か. But otherwise, we never have combinations and never lengthenings. So what does that mean ? What conclusion can we draw from all of this ? Well, it’s very simple. Combinations and lengthenings, basically, do not exist in the Japanese language, it does not exist in purely Japanese.
When we did the katakana course, we saw the new combinations, and we used them to write words in foreign languages. Words drawn from French, English, Spanish... whose phonetics did not exist in Japanese. But the very first combinations that the Japanese created, it was not to write their own language, it was to write the first foreign language they had to katakanize : Chinese.
And lengthenings are the same. The extensions, basically, do not exist in Japanese and were created to transcribe at best the phonetics of the Chinese ideograms. And it is very important to know this to fully understand the differences in pronunciations between purely Japanese readings and Sino-Japanese readings. If we resume certain Sino-Japanese readings, we note that there are lengthenings :
トウ
セイ
カイ
オウ
キョウ
Be aware that this is something that happens very frequently in Sino-Japanese.
So, what you need to be able to do is recognize, just by hearing a word, purely Japanese readings while differentiating them from Sino-Japanese readings. In writing, it’s very easy because a single kanji, it’s purely Japanese and two or more kanji combined, it’s Sino-Japanese. But don’t worry, orally, it’s also possible.
I just told you that in purely Japanese, we had basic kana put one after the other while in Sino-Japanese, we very often had lengthenings.
Now, I’m going to give you a small list of words in purely Japanese and a small list of words in Sino-Japanese. Practice speaking them orally and train your brain to distinguish between purely Japanese pronunciations and Sino-Japanese pronunciations. I’ll give you the words first without the kanji. The main thing is to focus on the pronunciation of each word.
Let’s start with purely Japanese words :
あき
そら
なつ
あらし
にわとり
かみなり
ひかり
むし
ふゆ
しま
たから
こころ
くち
OK! These are purely Japanese words. I now give you the kanji for all these words and their meanings. As you can imagine, these words are composed of a single kanji :
秋 . あき . autumn
空 . そら . sky
夏 . なつ . summer
嵐 . あらし . storm, hurricane
鶏 . にわとり . hen
雷 . かみなり . lightning
光 . ひかり . light
月 . つき . moon ; month (we will see this kanji in more detail when we’ll study the months of the year)
虫 . むし . insect
冬 . ふゆ . winter
島 . しま . island
宝 . たから . treasure
心 . こころ . heart
口 . くち . mouth
Now let’s look at Sino-Japanese words :
リンゴ
ビョウイン
タンゴ
タンゴシュウ
シュウチュウ
ユウレイ
ミョウヤク
チキュウ
OK! These are Sino-Japanese words. I now give you the kanji for all these words and their meanings. As you can imagine, these words are composed of several kanji :
林檎 . リンゴ . apple
病院 . ビョウイン . hospital
単語 . タンゴ . vocabulary (you will often see this word in future vocabulary lessons)
単語集 . タンゴシュウ . lexicon
集中 . シュウチュウ . concentration
集中力 . シュウチュウリョク . ability to concentrate
幽霊 . ユウレイ . ghost
妙薬 . ミョウヤク . miracle cure
地球 . チキュウ . Earth (planet)
By practicing orally and by training your ear to hear words, sometimes purely Japanese, sometimes Sino-Japanese, you should be able to recognize right away if a word is purely or Sino-Japanese. So, when you recognize a purely Japanese word, you will know that this word is made up of only one kanji, and when you recognize a Sino-Japanese word, you will know that this word is made up of two or more kanji.
And by dint of training, you will even be able to know precisely what this word is and what is / are the kanji that compose(s) this word.
For example, we know that 単語 . タンゴ means « vocabulary » and that this word is made up of two kanji. You have the sound タン, Sino-Japanese pronunciation of this kanji 単, and you have the sound ゴ which comes from this kanji, 語. And it’s easy to guess that this word is made up of two kanji since the first Sino-Japanese pronunciation is タン which ends with a ン, something that only exists in Sino-Japanese (at least 99% of the time). And the sound after a ン is necessarily the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of another kanji.
It is all a matter of training and of course memorizing vocabulary by written practice, by reading and by listening. Now if you hear 単語集 . タンゴシュウ, you know that this word is composed this time of three kanji.
It is important to understand all the subtle differences between purely Japanese pronunciations and Sino-Japanese pronunciations because in this way it incredibly facilitates the learning and memorization of new vocabulary words.
Most of you may have already noticed, if you already start looking for words in certain dictionaries or on websites, that Sino-Japanese words, if not written in kanji, are very often written in hiragana. Most often for simplicity. But in the end, when a Sino-Japanese word usually written in kanji is written in hiragana, if you do not know this word or if you cannot recognize it, you will have trouble knowing if it is a Sino-Japanese or purely Japanese word. Sometimes this can be confusing. So, in my opinion, it is better, when studying Japanese, to write the Sino-Japanese words in katakana to indicate that it is a Sino-Japanese reading.
I assure you that this way of doing things will make your life very much easier. The study of kanji is practically the bane of many students who scratch their heads wondering how to remember so many kanji and the pronunciations that go with it. But once you understand how it all works; you will have fun like crazy.
Now, it’s time for me to explain to you why we find lengthenings in Sino-Japanese words as I taught you in hiragana course when lengthenings with katakana is done with a dash normally. That’s how I taught you a few courses back.
To better understand, let’s start with a short sentence in Japanese :
鳥の歌だ。
It’s the song of a bird.
In this sentence, we have two purely Japanese words : 鳥. とり which means « bird » and 歌. うた which means « song ».
Imagine that I cannot write one of these words, for example the word 歌. うた. I can write it in hiragana. It is quite possible, moreover, in Japan, Japanese children who do not yet know all the kanji write the words they do not know in kanji in hiragana. This is completely normal and it will definitely happen to you too (although it is better to know your kanji !)
So I can write this sentence :
鳥のうただ。
It’s the song of a bird.
Now let’s take the following sentence :
歌手のポスターだ。
It’s the poster of a singer.
In this sentence, we have a word from English, ポスター which means « poster » and another Sino-Japanese word, 歌手. カシュ which means « singer ».
In writing, it is obvious that the word 歌手 . カシュ is Sino-Japanese, although we have no lengthening, this word sounds Sino-Japanese. It may not be obvious to you at the moment but through hard work, I assure you that you will eventually notice the difference. It’s a bit like us, with our English language, which contains a lot of words from Latin and Greek. We have for example the word « chronometer », but if you have a little bit of knowledge in etymology – without being a professional either – you know that the word « chrono » comes from the Greek khrónos (χρόνος) which means « the time ». Well, in Japanese, by dint of training, you will see, one day you’ll be able to deduce that such a word is purely Japanese or Sino-Japanese just by hearing it.
Let’s say I don’t know how to write the word 歌手 . カシュ, so I’m going to write it in kana. But will I write it in hiragana or katakana ? Logically, you would answer « we’re going to write it in katakana, it’s a Sino-Japanese reading. » and yet, no ! There is all the nuance. In my sentence, I will write it in hiragana :
かしゅのポスターだ。
It’s the poster of a singer.
Basically, Sino-Japanese readings are written in katakana because they are foreign katakanized sounds. Purely Japanese readings, we write them in hiragana because they are purely Japanese words. But today, all the words known as purely Japanese and the words known as Sino-Japanese are today all considered as full Japanese. And in the written language, a Sino-Japanese word will be written in hiragana.
It has been so many centuries since Japanese people have integrated Sino-Japanese words that they no longer consider them so much as foreign words. It has become so common within the language that now, a Sino-Japanese word, when they don’t know it in writing, they write it in hiragana.
Today, the words that are considered « foreign » are the words taken from Western languages like English, French, Spanish, German... Words from these languages will be written in katakana in the Japanese language because they are considered « foreign ». So, we write the word 歌手 . カシュ in hiragana in our sentence :
かしゅのポスターだ。
It’s the poster of a singer.
And you can see that the word ポスター which is a word drawn from English and which appeared very recently in the Japanese language – undoubtedly less than a hundred years ago – is considered a foreign word, so we write it in katakana.
To draw a parallel with the English language, I take again the example of the word « chronometer » with « chrono » which comes from the Greek khrónos (χρόνος) and « meter » which comes from the Latin metrum. We have combined these two foreign words at the base to create the word « chronometer » which is considered to be a completely English word.
The word « chronometer » in its current pronunciation with its current spelling is considered to be a word only English.
Remember, since we started vocabulary courses, I have been highlighting the pronunciation of words. If the word is purely Japanese, its pronunciation is written in hiragana and if the word is Sino-Japanese, its pronunciation is written in katakana. Thus, this gives you a visual cue which helps you to memorize the word and the nature of its pronunciation. I will continue to do this for all vocabulary courses throughout your learning, so there is nothing to worry about.
But, in sentences, when you don’t know the kanji writing of a word, you write it in hiragana just like the Japanese. In addition, when you have a text in Japanese with kanji of course, and hiragana and katakana, and you do not know how to pronounce this or that kanji, with a little luck, you have the pronunciation of kanji written just above, in hiragana of course. These pronunciations which are written just above the kanji, whether they are purely Japanese pronunciations like Sino-Japanese, have a name. They are called furigana.
You can often find furigana in children’s books, to help them discover new words, to know how a word is pronounced, which is very important in the learning process. You can also find furigana in most manga and on menu cards in restaurants, but it’s always more interesting to learn your kanji by heart, don’t forget.
Also, don’t forget what I taught you in the previous sections on lengthenings. In hiragana (for typical Japanese words with Sino-Japanese pronunciation), the lengthening is on the vowel. A lengthening will therefore last an additional time, by phonetically doubling the vowel of a given kana. In writing, the lengthening is done with the hiragana あ, い, う, え, お. And in katakana (for words considered foreign nowadays), the lengthening is done with a hyphen, which lets you know that the word in question comes from a foreign Western language.
That’s why when I present a new kanji to you, I write it with its purely Japanese pronunciation and its Sino-Japanese pronunciation.
I now present below two new kanji for a word that we have seen above :
地 . つち . チ, ジ → sòl, terra
球 . たま . キュウ → ball, sphere
And if I have to write it in a sentence, for example :
地球にいる。
I’m on Earth.
Let’s imagine I can’t write the word 地球 . チキュウ, so I’m going to write it in hiragana.
ちきゅうにいる。
I’m on Earth.
Note : you will have noticed that the kanji 地 (ground, land) has two Sino-Japanese pronunciations. We will come back to this a little later.
Phew! We have finally reached the end of this second sub-part. I know there is something to be confused about, I have tried to explain everything to you in great detail and I hope you are not lost. That said, once you understand all of this, that you know how to differentiate between purely Japanese and Sino-Japanese, that you can skillfully use katakana and hiragana, everything will be fine.
I assure you that everything will seems much simpler to you. Again, understanding a language is very important, even if it means dwelling on explanations for a long time, but I guarantee it will be worth it. Your learning of the Japanese language will only be simplified.
There are a few lessons back, I explained to you that there are a lot of homophones in Japanese. These homophones are mainly present in Sino-Japanese pronunciations, and there are nevertheless less of them in purely Japanese pronunciations.
To illustrate this, take a look below at the few examples I give you :
星 . ほし . セイ → star
西 . にし . セイ → west
We can see that the Sino-Japanese pronunciations are identical.
国 . くに . コク → country
黒 . くろ . コク → black
Here again, we can see that the Sino-Japanese pronunciations are identical.
東 . ひがし . トウ → east
冬 . ふゆ . トウ → winter
Here again, we can see that the Sino-Japanese pronunciations are identical.
Homophones in Sino-Japanese are therefore very frequent and will be much less so in purely Japanese. And here, I’m talking about homophones, that is to say which is pronounced the same way, I’m NOT talking about homonyms that can have the same spelling. Here we are talking about kanji, but each kanji is different and unique, and therefore is not written at all in the same way.
It happens that some kanji have a Sino-Japanese reading only. These kanji therefore have no purely Japanese reading, but how is this possible ?
Now remember the story I told you about the origins of kanji. We know that the Japanese discovered the principle of writing by recovering Chinese ideograms. They put their words on these ideograms and even recovered the Chinese pronunciations of these ideograms which they katakanized to adapt them to their language. But the Japanese did not necessarily have a word that was specific to their language for all the kanji they collected. If so, what did they do ? They just katakanized the Chinese pronunciation to adapt it to their language, and that’s it.
For example, they had no words to say « king ». Now, there is a kanji to say « king », this is it : 王. They got the Chinese pronunciation, katakanized it, which gave them :
王 . オウ → king (no purely Japanese pronunciation)
And they kept the kanji like that.
They did the same with the kanji of the « week » :
週 . シュウ → week (no purely Japanese pronunciation)
Also with the kanji of the « point » :
点 . テン → point (no purely Japanese pronunciation)
This case is quite frequent. Of course, all the kanji in the Japanese language all have, without exception, at least a Sino-Japanese reading since the kanji come from China and each one had initially at least one Chinese pronunciation.
Then, there are all the same kanji which have only a purely Japanese pronunciation. That is to say that the Japanese created kanji specifically to represent certain words, certain concepts that they already had in their own language, in purely Japanese. This case is very rare, unfortunately I have no examples to give you here but if you come across it, it’s normal, it happens.
Finally, we’re going to have some kanji with several purely Japanese readings and several Sino-Japanese readings. However, this is still quite common. So how is it possible ? Simply because a kanji is above all an ideogram, it does not simply represent an object or an animal or a person, it mainly represents an idea, and an idea can have several nuances. And so, to represent these nuances, the Japanese sometimes attributed to the same kanji several pronunciations. To give you an example, let’s take the kanji of the moon :
月 . つき . ゲツ / ガツ → moon ; month
There is only one purely Japanese pronunciation but two Sino-Japanese pronunciations. Why ? Well, the purely Japanese pronunciation つき allows us to say « the moon » when talking about our good old satellite that we see at night looking up. And what are the two Sino-Japanese pronunciations ? The first, ゲツ, allows to say « the moon » when the kanji 月 is combined with another ; and the second pronunciation ガツ, allows to say « the month ». Because a moon takes a whole month to fill and empty. The Japanese therefore decided to use the same kanji but different pronunciations, sometimes to speak of the moon sometimes to speak of the month.
I can finally come back to the kanji 地 (ground, land). A little higher, we saw the purely Japanese pronunciation and the two Sino-Japanese pronunciations of this kanji that I give you below :
地 . つち . チ / ジ → ground, land
For this kanji, if we have two Sino-Japanese pronunciations, it is not because each Sino-Japanese pronunciation has a different meaning and that the same kanji is pronounced differently depending on the meaning. No, the idea expressed by the kanji remains the same, the idea of the « ground », of the « land ». Simply, according to the kanji’s combinations including the kanji 地 (ground, land), it may be easier to pronounce the sound ジ that the sound チ. I will give you some examples of words including the kanji 地 (ground, land) sometimes with the pronunciation チ, sometimes with the pronunciation ジ. It may not seem obvious at first, but practice saying the words below several times :
地心 . チシン → center of the Earth
地図 . チズ → map, plan
地口 . ジグチ → pun
地点 . チテン → point, location (on a map)
We can even push the explanation further. You should know that certain pronunciations for certain words have been chosen, not only for ease of pronunciation but also to reduce the number of homophone words within the Japanese language. For example, the word 地心 . チシン is not difficult to pronounce. But let’s imagine, why wouldn’t this word be pronounced ジシン ? It is not more complicated, but if you search in the dictionary, you will see that there are already a lot of words that are already pronounced ジシン. However, we have seen that in Japanese, there are many homophones, especially in terms of Sino-Japanese pronunciations. In writing, that’s okay as long as you know your kanji, but speaking, it’s much more complicated. When you have a lot of homophone words in a language, and especially when all these homophone words are commonly used in everyday life, orally, this can lead to certain confusions even in spite of the context of the conversation which can help to distinguish.
If we take the word 地点 . チテン , it’s the same thing. The Japanese could have decided to pronounce this word ジテン, it’s no more complicated. But there are already plenty of words pronouncing ジテン in Japanese. This is particularly the case with the word 辞典 . ジテン which means « dictionary » for example.
Another way to counterbalance a large number of homophones in a language is to have synonyms, pronouncing differently, for words that are likely to be most commonly used. Thus, the word « dictionary » has up to six kanji combinations and four different pronunciations in Japanese :
辞書 .
ジショ . the dictionary
辞典 .
ジテン . the dictionary
字書 .
ジショ . the dictionary
字引 .
ジビキ . the dictionary
字典 .
ジテン . the dictionary
言葉典 .
ことばテン . the dictionary
All of these words mean exactly the same thing. And if you pay attention, you will notice that the word 言葉典 . ことばテン mix together pure and Sino-Japanese pronunciations. It does exist and we will see this case in more detail in the next course.
It also happens that some kanji are followed by a hiragana. I spoke to you about it briefly at the very beginning by telling you that sometimes the hiragana will serve as endings for verbs and adjectives. These kanji are kanji to read in purely Japanese reading. To give you an example :
黒 . くろ(い) . コク → black
We saw it above. This is the kanji of the color black, the name of the color, black. By the way, the next vocabulary course to come will be about colors. And here, I would like to take this opportunity to give you a little clarification as of this vocabulary course that you will have soon.
You must clearly differentiate between the color name, in the example above « the black », and the qualifying adjective « black ». If I take the example above :
黒 . くろ → black (in the sense of « the name of the color »)
黒い . くろい → black (in the sense of « the qualifying adjective »)
In English, we also use the terms “attributive adjectives” and “prepositive adjectives” when the adjective is located before the subject it qualified.
We will approach this subject in Japanese only from season three or four. So, for now, keep that in mind.
These hiragana which sometimes serve as endings for kanji, they are called okurigana. You will see it very often when we study more about verbs and adjectives.
Well, I’ll give you another example with a verb this time. I give you the verb « to eat » :
食べる . たべる . ショク → to eat
So, we have a Sino-Japanese pronunciation, ショク and a purely Japanese pronunciation, たべる. About the kanji, we therefore have two okurigana. The kanji itself simply represents た. And we’ll also have another purely Japanese reading of the same kanji which is 食う . くう. And both mean to eat, simply we will have a little nuance :
食べる . たべる . ショク → to eat
食う . くう . ショク → to puff
So, 食う . くう, you see, it’s a little less polite. It is the same kanji but with different purely Japanese pronunciations and therefore a different, slightly nuanced meaning that we translate into English by two verbs expressing this nuance. And in the process, you have okurigana which are also different depending on the verb.
That’s it ! We are finally at the end of this course. You can finally breathe, put down your pens, your pencils if you took notes. This course is over.
We have seen a lot today but everything that we have seen here is very important. Some would say I’m finicky but I’m like that and that’s it. I like things to be done right. Constructive and orderly. I can assure you that once you have fully understood all these stories about hiragana, katakana, kanji, purely and Sino-Japanese pronunciations, the problem of homophones, okurigana... the entire Japanese language will look much simpler to you.
I don’t have much else to say except to take your time to reread this lesson to fully assimilate everything we have just seen. You will probably need several readings to memorize all this, so go easy.
I give you below a vocabulary list with all the words we have seen today. Learn them by heart. You may well find most of these words in future lessons.
秋 .
あき . the autumn
空 .
そら . the sky
夏 .
なつ . the summer
嵐 .
あらし . the storm, the hurricane
鶏 .
にわとり . the hen
雷 .
かみなり . the lightning
光 .
ひかり . the light
月 .
つき . the moon ; the month (we’ll see this kanji in more detail when we get to the months of the year)
虫 .
むし . the insect
冬 .
ふゆ . the winter
島 .
しま . the island
宝 .
たから . the treasure
心 .
こころ . the heart
口 .
くち . the mouth
地 .
つち . the ground, the land
林檎 .
リンゴ . the apple
病院 .
ビョウイン . the hospital
単語 .
タンゴ . the vocabulary
単語集 .
タンゴシュウ . the lexicon
集中 .
シュウチュウ . the concentration
集中力 .
シュウチュウリョク . the ability to concentrate
幽霊 .
ユウレイ . the ghost
妙薬 .
ミョウヤク . the miracle cure
地球 .
チキュウ . the Earth (planet)
星 .
ほし . the star
西 .
にし . the west
国 .
くに . the country
黒 .
くろ . black
東 .
ひがし . the east
王 .
オウ . the king
週 .
シュウ . the week
点 .
テン . the point
地心 .
チシン . the center of the Earth
地図 .
チズ . the map, the plan
地口 .
ジグチ . the pun
地点 .
チテン . the point, the place (on a map)
辞書 .
ジショ . the dictionary
辞典 .
ジテン . the dictionary
字書 .
ジショ . the dictionary
字引 .
ジビキ . the dictionary
字典 .
ジテン . the dictionary
言葉典 .
ことばテン . the dictionary
食べる .
たべる . to eat
食う .
くう . to puff
Introduction