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emm2341 — Kanji Notes
Published: 2010-12-10 17:59:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 3710; Favourites: 53; Downloads: 42
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Description
At the beginning of Fall quarter this was one of the things that our Japanese teacher really got us on.It's an easy mistake too. You don't even realize you do it
I'm not promising to be a Kanji expert. Far from it actually. I still make a lot of silly mistakes like this. But I realize that a lot of people aren't lucky enough to have a teacher.
So I've created these short lessons that cover stuff that I've noticed or made mistakes on myself.
That way people can learn from my mistakes and learn a lot of cool things about how to improve their Kanji.
Some of these lessons are just going to be speculation or random thoughts. If you have your own thoughts or if you think that I am wrong on a particular topic feel free to let me know.
I'd be really interested to hear what others have observed
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Comments: 18
lol that reminds me of mais vs. maϊs in french. The first means 'but'(as in 'I'd like to come, but I'm busy) and the second means corn.... Why is it I relate japanese easier to French than English when English is my first language?
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It's hard to not compare two languages that you spend so much time learning. English becomes so second nature that we don't really think about it I guess.
I think comparisons like that are fun though
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.... I do know that stroke order is vital for Higagana/katakana, but its stressed even more so for Kanji... My mandarin friends say that even in Japanese, one extra inch of a line can change the entire meaning of a sentence, if not the mood... They gave me an example where one of their classmates handed in a creative essay to the teacher, and she couldn't understand it due to some characters not making any sense/totally random order.
... Thanks for adding these here Em-sensei, Many people tend to make the mistake a lot, even me... I'm sure people studying Japanese will really appreciate this, I know I do.
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I'm glad you are able to get something form it
I don't think I've had too problem with drawing the lines wrong.
The biggest trouble I have with Japanese kanji is that some of them look really similar. So I accidentally write the wrong character.
Doing that can make the sentences quite hard to understand
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... I did, and yes, I have the same problem when it comes to telling two apart when they look similar... Kind of a pain when it does happen too.
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Ooohh... so Kanji is kinda like Chinese!
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Well the Japanese did get Kanji from China
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Really? I didn't know that! So that's why they look so similar. My boyfriend theorized that something like this must have happened, but we never had anyone to tell us. You know?
c:
May I ask you the meaning of a Kanji I have seen? It's everywhere in a game I'm playing and I would like to be able to have an idea of what it might be saying. I can only understand like...every other word. Hah hah! Having one more I can understand might help keep me playing. It's hard to when you don't know what's going on.
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Sure, describe the kanji if you can. Even better would be if I could see the character.
There are certain ways to be able to look up a character by its characteristics.
That's how I find out a character I don't know. I look it up in a dictionary by the characteristics that it has.
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Upside-down Y.
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I think it's that one on that man's neck.
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This one is it for sure, though.
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Ooh...so did the Japanese steal the Chinese's words or did the Chinese steal the Japenese's words? *doesn't really get it*
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Japan originally didn't have a way of writing. When Chinese explorers came in contact with Japan, Japanese nobles started learning Chinese. Over time they found a way to adapt the Chinese character so that it matched their own language.
There were some Chinese words that made it into the Japanese language too but Japanese is it's own independent language. After that period of time (aprox. 1000 years ago) the Japanese language has remained uninfluenced by Chinese.
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...oh wow! How did you know that?
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I've done a lot of research on Japanese history for school projects and stuff. You also tend to pick up history about a language when you learn it I think.
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