Pictures worth a thousand words (what do you do all week part 2)

What do you do all week (part 2): Study Kanji!

Kanji is a system of writing in Japan. When writing the Japanese language, there are 2 alphabets to use as well as Kanji. To read the Newspaper here in Japan, a person needs to know approximately 2,000　kanji. Kids learn about 1,000 by 6th grade. We have learned a whopping 140 so far!

The picture on the left shows 3 individual Kanji characters. The Kanji for "Outside", "country" and "person. Each can be combined with various other Kanji to have a variety of meanings. If you combine these 3 together, as in the picture on the right, you get the word for "foreigner". Literally, "outside country person". Sometimes Kanji is convienient in this way, you can pull the idea of the word from knowledge of each particular Kanji. Occasionally the character itself resembles the meaning - but this is rare. Individual Kanji can represent one word, or they may have to be put together with another to represent one word.

Learning Kanji is straightforward memorization. We learn vocab words in our regular class, then in Kanji class we learn how to write them in Kanji. Here is a picture that shows how Kanji and the other 2 alphabets are used together. This is a worksheet from our daily class:

The more complex writings are Kanji, with they way of pronouncing it / Hiragana spelling written above it.

Seth really enjoys Kanji. I think it is in part because he is talented in drawing and art. Some of us (megan) are a bit more challenged. The most important thing is for us to learn to read Kanji because it's on everywhere - menus, product directions, signs, newspapers, advertisements....it is everywhere. Learning Kanji is pretty essential to being able to function in Japan.

Here is the status of my desk during a Kanji studying session:

In learning Kanji, we learn the stroke order for writing the Kanji (some have 13 strokes for example), the proportions of each piece, the different sounds the it can represent, the words it makes etc. 

Here is an example of using both Kanji and the Hiragana alphabet together:

The more complex looking symbols are Kanji, and the more simple looking ones are the hiragana alphabet. This sentence says, "Right now, i am studying Japanese". (please forgive my not so beautiful writing!)

If you're interesting in learning more about Kanji check out this article.