Hiragana

(, or ?) is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and in some cases rmaji (the Latin-script alphabet). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems; they have corresponding character sets in which each kana, or character, represents one mora (one sound in the Japanese language). Eachkana is either a vowel such as "a" (hiragana ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (hiragana ); or "n" (hiragana ), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng ([]), or like the nasal vowels of French. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single [1] consonants (except in the case of "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabaries and not alphabets. Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji, including grammatical particles such as kara "from", and suffixes such as ~san "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Likewise, hiragana is used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose. There is also some flexibility for words that have common kanji renditions to be optionally written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference. Verb and adjective inflections, as, for example, be-ma-shi-ta () intabemashita (?, "ate"), are written in hiragana, often following a verb or adjective root (here, "") that is written in kanji. When Hiragana is used to show the pronunciation of kanji characters as reading aid, it is referred to as furigana. The article Japanese writing system discusses in detail how the various systems of writing are used. There are two main systems of ordering hiragana, the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojon ordering.
Contents
[hide]

1 Writing system 2 Table of hiragana 3 Spelling rules 4 History 5 Stroke order and direction 6 Unicode 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

Writing system[edit]

Hiragana base characters

( N)

Functional marks and diacritics

The hiragana syllabary consists of 48 characters:

5 singular vowels Notionally, 45 consonantvowel unions, consisting of 9 consonants in combination with each of the 5 vowels, of which: 2 (yi, and wu) are unused 3 (ye, wi, and we) are obsolete in modern Japanese

unused/obsolete

1 (wo) is usually pronounced as a vowel ( o) in modern Japanese, and is preserved in only one use, as a particle

1 singular consonant

These are conceived as a 510 grid (gojon, , lit. "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, with the extra character being the anomalous singular consonant (N). Romanisation of the kana does not always strictly follow the consonant-vowel scheme laid out in the table. For example, , nominally ti, is very often romanised aschi in an attempt to better represent the actual sound in Japanese. These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: kg, ts/sz,td, hb and ch/shj. Hiragana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker ( ) changing the h to a p. A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (, or respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. Addition of the small y kana is called yon. For example, (ki) plus (small ya) becomes (kya). A small tsu , called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare saka "hill" with sakka "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in ! ([ite] Ouch!). However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne,no syllables' consonants to double them, the singular n () is added in front of the syllable. Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The chonpu (long vowel mark) () used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word , rmen, but this usage is considered non-standard. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds ( haa, nee). Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as and respectively.

Table of hiragana[edit]
The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojonkana without them, with the yon kana following. Obsolete and normally unused kana are shown in gray. For all syllables besides , the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for midword pronunciations see below.

Hiragana syllabograms

Monographs (gojon)

Digraphs (yon)

ya

yu

yo

a [a]

i [i]

u [u]

e [e]

o [o]

ka [ka]

ki [ki]

ku [ku]

ke [ke]

ko [ko]

kya [ka]

kyu [ku]

kyo [ko]

su [su]

se [se]

so [so]

sha [a]

shu [u]

sho [o]

sa [sa] shi [i]

te [te]

to [to]

cha [ ta]

chu [ tu]

cho [ to]

ta [ta] chi [ ti] tsu [ tsu]

na [na]

ni [ni]

nu [nu]

ne [ne]

no [no]

nya [na]

nyu [nu]

nyo [no]

ha [ha] ([wa] a s particl e)

hi [i]

fu [ u]

he [he] ([e] as particle)

ho [ho]

hya [a]

hyu [ u]

hyo [o]

me [me]

mo [mo]

mya [ma]

myu [mu]

myo [mo]

ma [m mi [mi] mu [mu] a]

ya [ja]

yu [ju]

yo [jo]

ra [a]

ri [i]

ru [u]

re [e]

ro [o]

rya [a]

ryu [u]

ryo [o]

wa [wa i/wi [(w) ] i]

e/we [(w) o/wo [(w)o] (partic e] le)

n [n] [m] [] before stop consonants; [] [ ] [] elsewhere

(indicates (reduplicat (reduplicat a geminateconsona es and es and nt) unvoices voices syllable) syllable)

Diacritics (gojon with (han)dakuten)

Digraphs with diacritics (yon with (han)dakuten)

ya

yu

yo

ga [a]

gi [i]

gu [u]

ge [e]

go [o]

gya [a]

gyu [u]

gyo [o]

za [za]

ji [d i]

zu [zu]

ze [ze]

zo [zo]

ja [d a]

ju [d u]

jo [d o]

da [da]

ji [d i]

zu [zu]

de [de]

do [do]

ja [d a]

ju [d u]

jo [d o]

ba [ba]

bi [bi]

bu [ u]

be [be]

bo [bo]

bya [ a]

byu [ u]

byo [ o]

pa [pa]

pi [pi]

pu [pu]

pe [pe]

po [po]

pya [pa]

pyu [pu]

pyo [po]

vu/u [v(u )]

In the middle of words, the g sound (normally []) often turns into a velar nasal [] and less often (although increasing recently) into the voiced velar fricative []. An exception to this is numerals; 15 juugo is considered to be one word, but is pronounced as if it was j and go stacked end to end: [d u o]. Additionally, the j sound (normally [d ]) can be pronounced [ ] in the middle of words. For example sji [su i] 'number'. In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa ( [ka]) and gwa ( [a]) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage and only exist in the extended katakana digraphs for approximating foreign language words. The singular n is pronounced [n] before t, ch, ts, n, r, z, j and d, [m] before m, b and p, [] before k and g, [] at the end of utterances, [ ] before vowels, palatal approximants (y), consonants s, sh, h, f and w, and finally [] after the voweli if another vowel, palatal approximant or consonant s, sh, h, f or w follows. In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are today usually pronounced [o ] (long o) and [e ] (long e) respectively. For example (lit. toukyou) is pronounced [to ko ] 'Tokyo', and sensei is [se se ] 'teacher'. However, tou is pronounced [tou] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the infinitive verb ending. Similarly, shite iru is pronounced [itei u] 'is doing'. For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to Japanese phonology.

Spelling rules[edit]
With a few exceptions for sentence particles , , and (pronounced as wa, o, and e), and a few other arbitrary rules, Japanese, when written in kana, is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage, differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system. The old spelling is referred to as kanazukai (?). There are two hiragana pronounced ji ( and ) and two hiragana pronounced zu ( and ), but to distinguish them, sometimes is written as di and is written as dzu. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as and zu is written as . There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For examplechijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is

spelled and tsudzuku ('to continue') is . For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi ( 'blood') is spelled in plain hiragana. When hana ('nose') and chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji 'nose bleed'), the sound of changes from chi to dji. So hanadji is spelled according to : the basic hiragana used to transcribe . Similarly, tsukau (/; 'to use') is spelled in hiragana, so kanazukai (; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled in hiragana. However, this does not apply when kanji are used phonetically to write words which do not relate directly to the meaning of the kanji (see also ateji). The Japanese word for 'lightning', for example, is inazuma (). The component means 'rice plant', is written in hiragana and is pronounced: ina. The component means 'wife' and is pronounced tsuma () when written in isolationor frequently as zuma () when it features after another syllable. Neither of these components have anything to do with 'lightning', but together they do when they compose the word for 'lightning'. In this case, the default spelling in hiragana rather than is used. Officially, and do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively . However, zura 'wig' (from katsura) and zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial today. Some people write the word for hemorrhoids as (normally ) for emphasis. No standard Japanese words begin with the kana (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.). A notable exception to this is the colloquial negative verb conjugation; for example wakaranai meaning "[I] don't understand" is rendered as wakaran. It is however not a contraction of the former, but instead comes from the classic negative verb conjugation nu ( wakaranu). is sometimes directly followed by a vowel (a, i, u, e or o) or a palatal approximant (ya, yu or yo). These are clearly distinct from the na, ni etc. syllables, and there are minimal pairs such as kin'en 'smoking forbidden', kinen 'commemoration', kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make the distinction. For example past prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's first name is actually Jun'ichir pronounced [d u iti o ] There are a few hiragana which are rarely used. wi and we are obsolete outside of Okinawan dialects. vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because loanwords and transliteratedwords are usually written in katakana, where the corresponding character would be written as . , , for ja/ju/jo are theoretically possible in rendaku, but are practically never used. For example 'throughout Japan' could be written , but is practically always . The myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyda () and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its katakana counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.
[clarification needed]

History[edit]

Hiragana characters' shapes were derived from the Chinese cursive script(ssho). Shown here is a sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang Dynastycalligrapher Sun Guoting, from the late 7th century.

Hiragana developed from man'ygana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice which [2] started in the 5th century. The oldest example of Man'ygana is Inariyama Swordwhich is an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. This sword is thought to be made in year of (which is A.D. 471 in commonly accepted theory). The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy. The figure below shows the derivation of h iragana from manygana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. Note also that the cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in the illustration.
[3]

When they were first developed, hiragana were not accepted by everyone. The educated or elites preferred to use only the kanji system. Historically, in Japan, the regular script ( kaisho) form of the characters was used by men and called otokode (?), "men's writing", while the cursive script (ssho) form of the kanji was used by women. Hence hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. And thus hiragana was first widely [4] used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the [5] alternative name of onnade (?) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively. Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and Chinese were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis. Originally, for all syllables there was more than one possible hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. The deprecated hiragana are now known as hentaigana (?). The pangram poem Iroha-uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except n , which was just a variant of before Muromachi era).

Stroke order and direction[edit]

The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. It is arranged in the traditional way, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively.

Unicode[edit]
Main article: Hiragana (Unicode block) Hiragana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0. The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040 ... U+309F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

Hiragana[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+304x

U+305x

U+306x

U+307x

U+308x

U+309x Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 6.3

=> Hiragana is the basic Japanese phonetic alphabet. It represents every sound in the Japanese language. Therefore, you can theoretically write everything in hiragana. However, because Japanese is written with no spaces, this will create nearly indecipherable text. => Hiragana is used along with kanji to write all native Japanese words (including words of Chinese origin). Hiragana is used for verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, words that have no kanji, words which are commonly written only in kana, words for which the writer does not know the kanji, and as furigana (hints provided by the writer to the reading of an unfamiliar kanji). => Hiragana are used when you can't use kanji, for sound symbolism, particles, help verb, and conjunctions. Hiragana can also be used for adverbs and names for animals and plants. Often you can see them together with a kanji to form a word. Hiragana is used for changing meanings of kanji by adding a hiragana character after the kanji. Hiragana is also used wherever kanji characters wouldn't be used. => Hiragana can be used to express and write all Japanese words without the use of kanji since hiragana is like an alphabet. If you can't remember the right kanji for a word, you can just spell it out in hiragana. There are 46 Hiragana to learn. In addition to those 46 hiragana there are some hiragana with different pronunciation. How many hiragana characters are used in Japanese Language? ->There are 46 hiragana symbols in Japanese, each with a particular sound but with no independent meaning. How do the 46 hiragana characters behave in the Japanese Language? ->Each Japanese "alphabet" has a particular function. Hiragana characters play two major roles. *Creating grammatical structure A major function of hiragana is to add grammatical structure to sentences. One way is in the form of okurigana, the hiragana characters added to the end of words to modify meaning.

*Showing pronunciation Hiragana characters are often written next to unusual kanji characters to show their pronunciation in the same way that we have added roman characters to the sentence above. In this case the hiragana characters are referred to as furigana or yomigana. In addition, hiragana is also used to write native Japanese words that have no kanji of their own.

Japanese Hiragana
Hiragana developed from Chinese characters, as shown below. Hiragana were originally called onnade or 'women's hand' as were used mainly by women - men wrote in kanji and katakana. By the 10th century, hiragana were used by everybody. The word hiragana means "oridinary syllabic script". In early versions of hiragana there were often many different characters to represent the same syllable, however the system was eventually simplified so that there was a one-to-one relationship between spoken and written syllables. The present orthography of hiragana was codified by the Japanese government in 1946.

Hiragana and the kanji from which they developed

In each column the rmaji appears on the left, the hiragana sym ols in the middle and the kanji from which they developed on the right. There is some dispute about the orgins of some of the symbols

The symbols for 'wi' and 'we' were made obsolete by the Japanese Minsitry of Education in 1946 as part of its language reforms. The symbols 'ha', 'he' and 'wo' are pronounced 'wa', 'e' and 'o' respectively when used as grammatical particles.

Hirgana syllabary ( / )

The symbols on the right are the basic hiragana syllabary in the order they appear in dictionaries and indices (reading from left to right and top to bottom). Additional sounds (the symbols on the right) are represented by diacritics and combinations of symbols.

Long vowels

Download this chart in Word, or PDF format (also includes katakana). See a Hiragana chart by Kayo Takumyo (JPG, 409K).

Pronunciation

Characteristics and usage of hiragana

The hiragana syllabary consists of 48 syllables and is mainly used to write word endings, known as okurigana in Japanese. Hiragana are also widely used in materials for children, textbooks, animation and comic books, to write Japanese words which are not normally written with kanji, such as adverbs and some nouns and adjectives, or for words whose kanji are obscure or obselete. Hiragana are also sometimes written above or along side kanji to indicate pronunciation, especially if the pronunication is obscure or non-standard. Hiragana used in this way are known as furigana or ruby. In horizontal texts, the furigana appear above the kanji and in vertical texts, the furigana appear on the right of the kanji. In newspapers it is a legal requirement for furigana to be attached to kanji which are not included in the official list of the 1,945 most frequently-used kanji. Newspapers in fact rarely use kanji not included in this list.

Furigana in action
The furigana in the following text are the small hiragana above or beside the kanji.

Horizontal text with furigana

This text in hiragana

This text in standard Japanese (without furigana)

Transliteration (rmaji)
Su ete no ningen wa, umare nagara ni shite jiy de ari, katsu, songen to kenri to ni tsuite yd de aru. Ningen wa, risei to ryshin to o sazukerareteari, tagai ni dh no seishin o motte kdshinakere anaranai. A recording of this text

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) Hiragana are sometimes used to write words which would normally written with katakana to make them appear more "feminine", particularly in comic books and cartoons for young girls. In children's video games texts are often written entirely in hiragana or katakana.

KATAKANA
Japanese has two forms of phonetic writing, hiragana and katakana. In modern Japanese, most writing is done in a mixture of hiragana and kanji (Chinese characters). What is the other script, katakana, used for? In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages. For example, "tomato" is written (tomato). Similarly for foreign names. For example, "America" is written (amerika) and "John" is written (jon). To see how a particular English word is represented in katakana, try the following tool which converts English into katakana based on a dictionary of pronunciations:
Turn English into katakana:
Convert to katakana

The names of animal and plant species and minerals are commonly written in katakana. See 1.3.2. How are animal and plant names written in Japanese?. Katakana are also often used for Japanese company names. For example Suzuki is ,and Mitsubishi is . Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs and advertisements. For example, gomi(rubbish) or megane (glasses). Japanese contains many words borrowed from Chinese up to a thousand years ago. These words are usually written in kanji. Words from modern Chinese are often written in katakana. For example,
Katakana Kanji Rmaji mjan Meaning mahjong

roncha chhan chsh shmai rmen

oolong tea fried rice roast pork a kind of dim sum Chinese-style noodles

Telegrams are written in katakana, and before the introduction of multibyte characters in computer systems in the 1980s, computer output was entirely in katakana. The Japanese banking system still requires account names to be in katakana. See 14.3. What is halfwidth katakana? Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign accent or "robotic" speech. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by ("konnichiwa") instead of the more usual hiragana ("konnichi wa"). Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana (see 1.3.3. What is furigana?). Katakana are often used to indicate the on'yomi readings (see 1.2.7. Why do kanji have several different pronunciations?) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary (see 1.2.11. How is a kanji dictionary used?). Some personal names are written in katakana, especially female ones. This was more common in the past, hence women of past generations often had katakana names such as (setsu). This is less common today. Nowadays most female babies are given kanji or hiragana names. Words with uncommon kanji are sometimes partly written in katakana. For example, in the word "dermatologist", hifuka (), the second kanji, , is quite unusual, and thus the word is

commonly written as , with the second character in katakana only. Katakana are also used when letters are used to represent sounds. For example hii (), meaning "sigh" is usually written in katakana, as are the calls of animals (see 15.3. What noises do animals make?). Historically, katakana was used in a different way. Until the end of World War 2, official documents used a mix of katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana (see 1.1.8. What is okurigana?) and particles (see 2.3. Particles ()) such as wa or wo.

What is Katakana?
Katakana, like hiragana, is a phonetic script much like English where each character has a unique sound and the characters can be written one after the next to spell out a word. Learning katakana is usually the second step in learning how to read and write Japanese - hiragana is usually taught first. Katakana is used to represent foreign words which have been adopted into the Japanese language (loan words) and foreign names (personal and country names).

Japanese Katakana
Origin
The katakana syllabary was derived from abbreviated Chinese characters used by Buddhist monks to indicate the correct pronunciations of Chinese texts in the 9th century. At first there were many different symbols to represent one syllable of spoken Japanese, but over the years the system was streamlined. By the 14th century, there was a more or less one-to-one correspondence between spoken and written syllables. The word katakana "part (of kanji) syllabic script". The "part" refers to the fact that katakana characters represent parts of kanji.

Characteristics and usage of katakana

The katakana syllabary consists of 48 syllables and was originally considered "men's writing". Since the 20th century, katakana have been used mainly to write non-Chinese loan words, onomatopoeic words, foreign names, in telegrams and for emphasis (the equivalent of bold, italic or upper case text in English). Before the 20th century all foreign loanwords were written with kanji.

Katakana are also used to write Ainu, a language spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Katakana and the kanji from which they developed

In each column the rmaji appears on the left, the katakana sym ols in the middle and the kanji from which the symbols were derived on the right.

The symbols for 'wi' and 'we' were made obsolete by the Japanese Minsitry of Education in 1946 as part of its language reforms.

Katakana syllabary ( / )
The symbols on the right are the basic katakana syllabary in the order they appear in dictionaries and indices (reading from left to right and top to bottom). Additional sounds (the symbols on the right) are represented by diacritics and combinations of symbols.

Long vowels

Download this chart in Word, or PDF format (also includes hiragana).

Pronunciation

Sample text in Katakana

This text in standard Japanese

Transliteration (rmaji)
Su ete no ningen wa, umarenagara ni shite jiy de ari, katsu, songen to kenri to ni tsuite yd de aru. Ningen wa, risei to ryshin to o sazukerarete ori, tagai ni dh no seishinn o motte kd shinakereba naranai. A recording of this text

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Katakana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Katakana

Type

Syllabary

Languages

Japanese, Okinawan, Ainu,Palauan[1]

Time period

~800 AD to the present Oracle Bone Script

Parent systems

Seal Script Clerical Script Regular script (Kanji) Man'ygana Katakana

Sister systems Hiragana, Hentaigana

ISO 15924

Kana, 411

Direction

Left-to-right

Unicode alias

Katakana

Unicode range

U+30A0U+30FF, U+31F0U+31FF, U+3200U+32FF, U+FF00U+FFEF, U+1B000U+1B0FF

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Japanese writing

Kanji

Kana

Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'ygana Sogana Uses

Furigana Okurigana Braille

Rmaji

Hepburn (colloquial)

Kunrei (ISO)

Nihon (ISO translit.) JSL (transliteration) Wpuro (keyboard) Punctuation

Katakana (, or ?) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana,[2] kanji, and in some cases the Latin script (known asromaji). The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems; they have corresponding character sets in which each kana, or character, represents one mora (one sound in the Japanese language). Each kana is either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana ); or "n" (katakana ), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng ([]), or like thenasal vowels of Portuguese or French. In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inflections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary is primarily used fortranscription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo). It is also used for emphasis, to represent onomatopoeia, and to write certain Japanese language words, such as technical and scientific terms, and the names of plants, animals, and minerals. Names of Japanese companies are also often written in katakana rather than the other systems. Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts.[3] There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojon ordering.
Contents
[hide]

1 Writing system

o o

1.1 Script 1.2 Japanese

o o o

1.2.1 Syllabary and orthography 1.2.2 Usage

1.3 Ainu 1.4 Taiwanese 1.5 Okinawan

2 Table of katakana 3 History

4 Stroke order 5 Computer encoding

o o

5.1 Half-width kana 5.2 Unicode

6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Writing system[edit]
Script[edit]
Gojon Katakana characters with nucleus

Katakana coda character

Katakana diacritics

dakuten

handakuten

The complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks:

5 nucleus vowels V 42 core or body (onset-nucleus) syllabograms CV, consisting of 9 consonants in combination with each of the 5 vowels, of which 3 possible combinations (yi, ye, wu) are not canonical

1 coda consonant C

These are conceived as a 510 grid (gojon, , lit. "Fifty Sounds") which inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. In vertical textcontexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on the right hand side and (a) on top. Unlike other syllabaries, katakana glyphs in the same row or column do not share common graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi, yeand wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese. The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character, the nasal stop (n). This can appear in several positions, most often next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana, below the u column. It may also be appended to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its own.

The script includes two diacritic marks that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. Both appear mutually exclusive at the upper right of the base character. A double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration, most often it voices the consonant: kg, sz, td and hb. Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: hp. Diacritics are a comparatively new feature of the script, only becoming mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century. Their application is strictly limited in proper writing systems, but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions. Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller size after a normal one (see below), but this does not make the script trulybicameral. The layout of the gojon table promotes a systematic view of kana syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single consonant followed by a vowel. This is, however, not the case today (synchronically) and also never has been (diachronically). Therefore existing schemes for the romanization of Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script, e.g. nihon-siki ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics, usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki chi. Both approaches conceal the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs, especially those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda position, too, where the vowel is not pronounced, or only as a weak schwa.

Japanese[edit]
Syllabary and orthography[edit]
Katakana used in Japanese orthography

n unused/obsolete

Katakana functional characters

Of the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, and one of these is preserved for only a single use:

sokuon

chonpu
wi and we are pronounced as vowels in modern Japanese and are therefore obsolete, being supplanted by i and e respectively.

iteration mark

wo is now used only as a particle, and is normally pronounced the same as vowel o. As a particle, it is usually written in hiragana () and the katakana form, , is uncommon.

A small version of the katakana for ya, yu or yo (, or respectively) may be added to katakana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o, e.g. (ki + ya) /kja/. Addition of the small y kana is called yon. Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds ( haa, nee), ut in katakana they are more often used in yon-like extended digraphs designed to representphonemes not present in Japanese; examples include (che) in chenji ("change"), and (wi) and (di) in Wikipedia. A character called a sokuon, which is visually identical to a small tsu , indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled); this is represented in rmaji by doubling the consonant that follows thesokuon. For example, compare Japanese saka "hill" with sakka "author". Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example English "bed" is represented as (beddo). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants to double these, the singular n () is added in front of the syllable. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound; Bach is written (Bahha); Mach as (Mahha). Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana, but katakana uses a vowel extender mark, called a chonpu ("long vowel mark"), in foreign loanwords. This is a short line () following the direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and vertical for tategaki (vertical text). For example, mru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as (rsoku (?, "candle")) or (ktai (?, "mobile phone")), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark, too. Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as and respectively.

Usage[edit]

Main article: Japanese writing system In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo.[4] For example, "television" is written (terebi). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For example, the United States is usually referred to as Amerika, rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of Amerika. Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia,[4] words used to represent sounds for example, (pinpon), the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell. Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana.[5] Homo sapiens ( Homo sapiensu?), as a species, is written (hito), rather than its kanji . Katakana are also often, but not always, used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example Suzuki is written , and Toyota is written . Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards). For example, it is common to see koko ("here"), gomi ("trash"), or megane ("glasses"). Words the writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.[4] Pre-World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o. Katakana were also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems before the introduction of multibyte characters in the 1980s. Most computers in that era used katakana instead of kanji or hiragana for output. Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects which are borrowed directly use katakana rather than the Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings.

Examples of Chinese loanwords in Japanese

Japanese

Rmaji

Meaning

Chinese Romanization Source language

mjan

mahjong

mjing Mandarin

roncha Oolong tea

wlngch

chhan fried rice

chofn

chsh barbecued pork

cha siu Cantonese

shmai a form of dim sum

siu maai

The very common Chinese loanword rmen, written in katakana as in Japanese, is rarely written with its kanji (). There are rare instances where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is kh, ("coffee"), which can be alternatively written as . This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty. Katakana are used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary. For instance, the kanji has a Japanese pronunciation, written in hiragana as hito (person), as well as a Chinese derived pronunciation, written in katakana as jin (used to denote groups of people). Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original. Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana . Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names. It is very common to write words with difficult-to-read kanji in katakana. This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word hifuka ("dermatology"), the second kanji, , is considered difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written or , mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, the difficult-to-read kanji such as gan ("cancer") are often written in katakana or hiragana. Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan-ry of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi. Some instructors for Japanese as a foreign language "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules."[6] Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well.[7] Other instructors introduce the

katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. This was the approach taken by the influential American linguistics scholar Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Written Language (parallel to Japanese: The Spoken Language).[8]

Ainu[edit]
Main article: Ainu language#Writing Katakana is commonly used to write the Ainu language by Japanese linguists. In Ainu language katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant and with an arbitrary vowel. For instance "up" is represented by ( [u followed by small pu]). Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana, ([tse]), and or ([tu]). In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic xtensions lock (U+31F0U+31FF) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used for the Ainu language only.

Taiwanese[edit]
Main article: Taiwanese kana Taiwanese kana ( ) is a katakana-based writing system once used

to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan was under Japanese control. It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages. Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to the Zhyn fho characters, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. A dot below the initial kana represented aspirated consonants, and , , , , , and with a superpositional bar represented sounds found only in Taiwanese.

Okinawan[edit]
Main article: Okinawan scripts Katakana is used as a phonetic guide for the Okinawan language, unlike the various other systems to represent Okinawan, which use hiragana with extensions. The system was devised by the Okinawa Center of Language Study of the University of the Ryukyus. It uses many extensions and yon to show the many nonJapanese sounds of Okinawan.

Table of katakana[edit]
For modern digraph additions that are used mainly to transcribe other languages, see Transcription into Japanese.

This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization and rough IPA transcription for their use in Japanese. Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojon kana without them. Characters shi and tsu , and so and n(g) , look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush. Grey background indicates obsolete characters.

Katakana syllab

Monographs (gojon)

a [a]

i [i]

u u

e [e]

ka [ka]

ki [ki]

ku u

ke [ke]

sa [sa]

shi [i]

su u

se [se]

ta [ta]

chi i]

tsu u

te [te]

na [na]

ni ni

nu nu

ne [ne]

ha [ha]

hi [i]

fu [u

he [he]

ma [ma]

mi [mi]

mu

me [me]

ya [ja]

[n 1]

yu u

[n 1]

ra [a]

ri [i]

ru [u

re [e]

wa [wa]

wi [i]
[n 2]

[n 1]

we [e]
[n 2]

Final nasal monograph

n [n] [m] before stop consonants; n[] ] elsewhere

(before gemin

Monographs with diacritics: gojon with (han)dakuten

ga [a

gi [i

gu [u

ge [e

za [za] ji

i]

zu u

ze [ze]

da [da] ji

i]
[n 3]

zu u
[n 3]

de [de]

ba [ba]

bi [bi]

bu u

be [be]

pa [pa]

pi [pi]

pu pu

pe [pe]

Notes
1. 2. ^ Jump up to: ^ Jump up to:
a b c a b c

Theoretical combinations yi, ye and wu are unused . The characters in positions wi and we are obsolete in modern Japanese, and have

been replaced by (i) and (e). The character wo, in practice normally pronounced o, is preserved in only one use: as a particle. This is normally written in hiragana (), so katakana sees only limited use. See Gojon and the articles on each character for details. 3. ^ Jump up to:
a b c d e

The (di) and (du) kana (often romanised as ji and zu) are primarily used

for etymologic spelling , when the unvoiced equivalents (ti) and (tu) (often romanised as chi and tsu) undergo a sound change (rendaku) and become voiced when they occur in the middle of a compound word. In other cases, the identically-pronounced (ji) and (zu) are used instead. (di) and (du) can never begin a word, and they are not common in katakana, since the concept of rendaku does not apply to transcribed foreign words, one of the major uses of katakana.

History[edit]

Katakana was developed in the early Heian Period (AD 794 to 1185) by Buddhist monks from parts of man'ygana characters as a form of shorthand. For example, ka comes from the left side of ka "increase". The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character eventually became each corresponding symbol.[9] Recent findings by Yoshinori Kobayashi, professor of Japanese at Tokushima Bunri University suggest the possibility that the comma which is used in Okototen (?) (reading guide marks) may have originated in the eighth century on the Korean Peninsula (possibly from Silla Dinasty) and been introduced to Japan through Buddhist texts.[10][11]

Stroke order[edit]
The following table shows the method for writing each katakana character. It is arranged in the traditional way, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively.

Computer encoding[edit]

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved. (September 2009)

In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS), many fonts intended for Chinese (such as MS Song) and Korean (such as Batang) also include katakana.

Half-width kana[edit]
Main article: Half-width kana In addition to the usual full-width ( zenkaku?) display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, half-width ( hankaku?) (there are no half-width hiragana or kanji). The half-width forms were originally associated with theJIS X 0201 encoding. Although their display form is not specified in the standard, in practice they were designed to fit into the same rectangle of pixels as Roman letters to enable easy implementation on the computer equipment of the day. This space is narrower than the square space traditionally occupied by Japanese characters, hence the name "half-width". In this scheme, diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) are separate characters. When originally devised, the half-width katakana were represented by a single byte each, as in JIS X 0201, again in line with the capabilities of contemporary computer technology. In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to support the full range of Japanese characters, including katakana, hiragana and kanji. Their display forms were designed to fit into an approximately square array of pixels, hence the name "full-width". For backwards compatibility, separate support for half-width katakana has continued to be available in modern multi-byte encoding schemes such as Unicode, by having two separate blocks of characters one displayed as usual (fullwidth) katakana, the other displayed as half-width katakana. Although often said to be obsolete, in fact the half-width katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or half-width katakana, and half-width katakana are commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUCJP, Unicode and Shift-JIS have half-width katakana code as well as full-width. By contrast, ISO-2022JP has no half-width katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP.

Unicode[edit]
Main articles: Katakana (Unicode block), Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms (Unicode block), and Katakana Phonetic Extensions Katakana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for (full-width) katakana is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. Encoded in this block along with the katakana are the nakaguro word-separation middle dot, the chon vowel extender, the katakana iteration marks, and a ligature of sometimes used in vertical writing.

Katakana[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+30Ax

U+30Bx

U+30Cx

U+30Dx

U+30Ex

U+30Fx

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.3

Half-width equivalents to the usual full-width katakana also exist in Unicode. These are encoded within the halfwidth and fullwidth forms block (U+FF00U+FFEF) (which also includes full-width forms of Latin characters, for instance), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61U+FF64 are

half-width punctuation marks). This block also includes the half-width dakuten and handakuten. The fullwidth versions of these characters are found in the Hiragana block.

Segment of halfwidth and fullwidth forms Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+FF6x

U+FF7x

U+FF8x

U+FF9x

Circled katakana are code points U+32D0 to U+32FE in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block (U+3200 - U+32FF). A circled (n) is not included.

Segment of Enclosed CJK Letters and Months Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+32Dx

U+32Ex

U+32Fx

Extensions to Katakana for phonetic transcription of Ainu and other languages were added to the Unicode Standard in March, 2002 with the release of version 3.2. The Unicode block for Katakana Phonetic Extensions is U+31F0 ... U+31FF:

Katakana Phonetic Extensions[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+31Fx

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.3

Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0. The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000 ... U+1B0FF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

Kana Supplement[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)

U+1B00x

U+1B01x

...
U+1B0Fx Notes

(omitted; not used yet)

1.^ As of Unicode version 6.3

KANJI
Kanji
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. For other uses, see Kanji (disambiguation). Kanji (; Japanese pronunciation: [kand i]
[1]

listen) are the adopted logographic Chinese

characters (hanzi) that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana, katakana, Hindu-Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet. The Japanese language term kanji for the Chinese characters literally means "Han characters"[2] and is written using the same characters as the Chinese language word hanzi (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ).[3]

Japanese writing

Kanji

Kana

Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'ygana Sogana Uses

Furigana Okurigana Braille

Rmaji

Hepburn (colloquial)

Kunrei (ISO)

Nihon (ISO translit.) JSL (transliteration) Wpuro (keyboard) Punctuation

Kanji

Type

Logographic

Languages

Old Japanese, Japanese Oracle Bone Script

Parent systems

Seal Script Clerical Script Kaishu Kanji

Sister systems Hanja, Zhuyin, Simplified Chinese,Nom, Khitan script, Jurchen script

ISO 15924

Hani, 500

Direction

Left-to-right

Unicode alias

Han

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Chinese characters

Scripts

Precursors

Oracle bone script

Bronze script Seal script

large

small

Clerical script Cursive script

Regular script

Semi-cursive script Type styles

Imitation Song

Ming

Sans-serif Properties

Strokes

Stroke order

Radicals

Classification Variants

Standards on character forms

Kangxi Dictionary form

Xin Zixing

Commonly Used Characters

Standard Form of National Characters List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters

Standards on grapheme usage

Graphemic variants

Hanyu Tongyong Zi Hanyu Changyong Zi

Ty an i

Jy an i Reforms

Chinese traditional

simplified

simplified, 1st round simplified, 2nd round

debate

Japanese old new

Ryakuji

Korean Yakja

Singaporean in io Homographs

Literary and colloquial readings Use in other scripts

Zetian characters

N Shu

Kanji (Kokuji) Kana (Man'ygana)

Idu

Hanja (Gukja)

Nom Sawndip


For a list of words relating to kokuji, see the Japanesecoined CJKV characters category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Contents
[hide]

1 History 2 Local developments and divergences from Chinese

o o

2.1 Kokuji 2.2 Kokkun

3 Readings

o o o o o o o o o

3.1 On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) 3.2 Kun'yomi (Japanese reading) 3.3 Mixed readings 3.4 Special readings 3.5 Single character gairaigo 3.6 Other readings 3.7 When to use which reading 3.8 Pronunciation assistance 3.9 Spelling words

4 Total number of kanji 5 Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

o o o o o

5.1 Kyiku kanji 5.2 Jy kanji 5.3 Jinmeiy kanji 5.4 Hygaiji 5.5 Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji

5.5.1 Gaiji

6 Types of Kanji: by category

o o o o o o

6.1 Shkei moji () 6.2 Shiji moji () 6.3 Kaii moji () 6.4 Keisei moji () 6.5 Tench moji () 6.6 Kasha moji ()

7 Related symbols 8 Collation 9 Kanji education 10 See also 11 Notes 12 References 13 External links

13.1 Glyph conversion

History[edit]
Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China. The earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na Gold Seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Yamato emissary in 57 AD.[4] Chinese coins from the 1st century AD have been found in Yayoi periodarchaeological sites.[5] However, the Japanese of that era probably had no comprehension of the script, and would remain illiterate until the 5th century AD.[5] According to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, a semi-legendary scholar called Wani () was dispatched to Japan by the Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of mperor jin in the early 5th century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters.[6] The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court.[5] For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.[6] The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period however, a system known as kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to restructure and read

Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words,[when?] resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. A writing system called man'ygana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'ysh) evolved[when?] that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'ygana written in cursive style evolved intohiragana,[when?] a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakanaemerged via a parallel path:[when?] monastery students simplified man'ygana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji. In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems, while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings and as phonetic complements to disambiguate readings (okurigana), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji is considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

Local developments and divergences from Chinese[edit]

While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji used in Japanese and Chinese characters used in Chinese. Such differences include (i) the use of characters created in Japan, (ii) characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and (iii) post-World War II simplifications of the kanji. Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has the result that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.

Kokuji[edit]
See also: Gukja and Chinese family of scripts#Adaptations for other languages Kokuji (, "national characters") are characters particular to Japan, generally devised in Japan. The term wasei kanji (, "kanji made in Japan") is also used to refer to kokuji. These are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called gukja (), which is the cognate term; there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones. Other languages using theChinese family of scripts sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese ch nm, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and Zhuang sawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.

Since kokuji are generally devised for existing native words, these usually only have native kun readings. However, they occasionally have a Chinese on reading, derived from a phonetic, as in , d, from , and in rare cases only have an on reading, as in , sen, from , which was derived for use in technical compounds ( means "gland", hence used in medical terminology). The majority of kokuji are ideogrammatic compounds (), meaning that they are composed of two (or more) characters, with the meaning associated with the combination. For example, is composed of (person radical) plus (action), hence "action of a person, work". This is in contrast to kanji generally, which are overwhelmingly phono-semantic compounds. This difference is because kokuji were coined to express Japanese words, so borrowing existing (Chinese) readings could not express these combining existing characters to logically express the meaning was the simplest way to achieve this. Other illustrative examples (below) include sakaki tree, formed as "tree" and "god", literally "divine tree", and tsuji "crossroads, street" formed as () "road" and "cross", hence "cross-road". In terms of meanings, these are especially for natural phenomena (esp. species) that were not present in ancient China, including a very large number of fish, such as (sardine). In other cases they refer to specifically Japanese abstract concepts, everyday words (like ), or later technical coinages (such as ). There are hundreds of kokuji in existence.[7] Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language. These include the following: Jy kanji has a out 9 kokuji; there is some dispute over classification, ut generally includes these:

d, () hatara(ku) "work", the most commonly used kokuji, used in the fundamental verb hatara(ku) "work", included in elementary texts and on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N5, for example.

() ko(mu),

used in the fundamental verb komu "to be crowded"

() nio(u), used in common verb niou "to smell, to be fragrant" hatake "field of crops" sen, "gland" tge "mountain pass" waku, "frame" hei, "wall" shibo(ru), "to squeeze" (disputed; see below)

Jinmeiy kanji:

sakaki "tree, genus Cleyera" tsuji "crossroads, street"

monme (unit of weight)

Hygaiji:

shitsu(ke) "training, rearing (an animal, a child)"

Some of these characters (for example, , "gland"[8]) have been introduced to China. In some cases the Chinese reading is the inferred Chinese reading, interpreting the character as a phono-semantic compound (as in how on readings are sometimes assigned to these characters in Chinese), while in other cases (such as ), the Japanese on reading is borrowed (in general this differs from the modern Chinese pronunciation of this phonetic). Similar coinages occurred to a more limited extent in Korea and Vietnam. Historically, some kokuji date back to very early Japanese writing, being found in the Man'ysh, for example iwashi "sardine" dates to the Nara period (8th century) while they have continued to be created as late as the late 19th century, when a number of characters were coined in the Meiji era for new scientific concepts. For example, some characters were produced as regular compounds for some (but not all) SI units, such as ( "meter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer see Chinese characters for SI units for details. In Japan the kokuji category is strictly defined as characters whose earliest appearance is in Japan. If a character appears earlier in the Chinese literature, it is not considered a kokuji even if the character was independently coined in Japan and unrelated to the Chinese character (meaning "not borrowed from Chinese"). In other words, kokuji are not simply characters that were made in Japan, but characters that were first made in Japan. An illustrative example isank (?, monkfish). This spelling was created in Edo period Japan from the ateji (phonetic kanji spelling) for the existing word ank by adding the radical to each character the characters were "made in Japan". However, is not considered kokuji, as it is found in ancient Chinese texts as a corruption of (). is considered kokuji, as it has not been found in any earlier Chinese text. Casual listings may be more inclusive, including characters such as .[9] Another example is , which is sometimes not considered kokuji due to its earlier presence as a corruption of Chinese .

Kokkun[edit]
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun () and include characters such as:

fuji (wisteria; Ch. tng rattan, cane, vine) oki (offing, offshore; Ch. chng rinse, minor river (Cantonese)) tsubaki (Camellia japonica; Ch. chn Ailanthus)

Readings[edit]

Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words (or, in some cases, morphemes), and thus the same character may be pronounced in different ways. From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is appropriate depends on recognizing which word it represents, which can usually be determined from context, intended meaning, whether the character occurs as part of a compound word or an independent word, and sometimes location within the sentence. For example, (?) is usually read ky, meaning "today", but in formal writing is instead read konnichi,meaning "nowadays"; this is understood from context.

Borrowing Typology of Han Characters

Meaning

Pronunciation

a) semantic on

L1

L1

b) semantic kun

L1

L2

c) phonetic on

L1

d) phonetic kun

L2

*With L1 representing the language borrowed from (Chinese) and L2 representing the borrowing language (Japanese).[10]

Nevertheless, some cases are ambiguous and require a furigana gloss, which are also used simply for difficult readings or to specify a non-standard reading. Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi (literally "sound reading", from Chinese) or kun'yomi (literally "meaning reading", native Japanese), and most characters have at least two readings, at least one of each. However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku (?, chrysanthemum) (on) or iwashi (?, sardine) (kun); kun-only are common for Japanese-coined kanji (kokuji). Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is , which is read as sei, sh, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, ikasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru, and ha-yasu, totaling 8 basic readings (first 2 are on, rest are kun), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct; see okurigana: for details. Most often a character will be used for both sound and meaning, and it is simply a matter of choosing the correct reading based on which word it represents. In other cases, a character is used only for sound (ateji), in which case pronunciation is still based on an standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of ateji, narrowly jukujikun), in which case the individual character does not have a reading, only the full compound; this is significantly more complicated; see special readings, below. The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese languages, where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese languages (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.

On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading)[edit]

The on'yomi (), the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi, and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character "to work", which has thekun'yomi "hataraku" and the on'yomi "d", and "gland", which has only the on'yomi "sen" in both cases these come from the on'yomi of the phonetic component, respectively "d" and "sen". Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types:

Go-on (?, "Wu sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Southern and Northern Dynasties during the 5th and 6th centuries. There is a high probability of Go referring to the Wu region (in the vicinity of modernShanghai), which still maintains linguistic similarities with modern Sino-Japanese vocabulary.

Kan-on (?, "Han sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an ( or , modern Xi'an). Here, Kan is used in the sense of China.

T-on (?, "Tang sound") readings are from the pronunciations of later dynasties, such as the Song () and Ming (). They cover all readings adopted from the Heian era () to the Edo period (). This is also known asTs-on (), "Tang and Song sound".

Kan'y-on (?, "Customary sound") readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have become accepted into the language. In some cases, they are the actual readings that accompanied the character's introduction to Japan, ut do not match how the character should e read according to the rules of character construction and pronunciation.

Examples (rare readings in parentheses)

Kanji Meaning Go-on Kan-on T-on Kan'y-on

bright

my

mei

(min)

go

gy g

k k

(an)

extreme

goku

kyoku

The most common form of readings is the kan-on one, and use of a non-kan-on reading in a word where the kanon reading is well-known is a common cause of reading mistakes or difficulty, such as in ge-doku ( ,
?

pearl

shu

shu

ju

(zu)

degree

do

(to)

detoxification, anti-poison) (go-on), where (?) is usually instead read as kai. The go-on readings are especially common in Buddhist terminology such as gokuraku "paradise", as well as in some of the earliest loans, such as the Sino-Japanese numbers. The t-on readings occur in some later words, such as isu "chair",futon "mattress", and andon , "a kind of paper lantern". The goon, kan-on, and t-on readings are generally cognate (with rare exceptions of homographs; see below), having a common origin in Old Chinese, and hence form linguistic

transport

(shu)

(shu)

yu

masculine

bear

child

shi

shi

su

clear

sh

sei

(shin)

doublets or triplets, but they can differ significantly from each other and from modern Chinese pronunciation. In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese sound, though there are distinct literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. However, some homographs called (pinyin: duynz) such as

capital

ky

kei

(kin)

soldier

hy

hei

strong

ky

(pinyin: hng or xng) (Japanese: an, g, gy) have more than one reading in Chinese representing different meanings, which is reflected in the carryover to Japanese as well. Additionally, many Chinese syllables, especially those with an entering tone, did not fit the largely consonant-vowel (CV) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most on'yomi are composed of two morae (beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora, the vowel i, or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or moraic n, chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. It may be that palatalized consonants before vowels other than i developed in Japanese as a result of Chinese borrowings, as they are virtually unknown in words of native Japanese origin. On'yomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words ( jukugo), many of which are the result of the adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the English borrowings from Latin, Greek, and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts. The major exception to this rule isfamily names, in which the native kun'yomi are usually used (though on'yomi are found in many personal names, especially men's names).

Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)[edit]

The kun'yomi (), Japanese reading, or native reading (literally, meaning reading), is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamato kotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinesecharacter when it was introduced. As with on'yomi, there can be multiple kun'yomi for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all. For instance, the kanji for east, , has the on'yomi t. However, Japanese already had two words for "east": higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji had the latter readings added as kun'yomi. In contrast, the kanji , denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native Japanese equivalent; it only has an on'yomi, sun, with no native kun'yomi. Most kokuji, Japanesecreated Chinese characters, only have kun'yomi (although some have back-formed a pseudo-on'yomi by analogy with similar characters, such as d, from d), though some, such as sen "gland", have only an on'yomi. Kun'yomi are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of yamato kotoba. Most noun or adjective kun'yomi are two to three syllables long, while verb kun'yomi are usually between one and three syllables in length, not counting trailing hiragana called okurigana. Okurigana are not considered to be part of the internal reading of the character, although they are part of the reading of the word. A beginner in the language will rarely come across characters with long readings, but readings of three or even four syllables are not uncommon. This contrasts with on'yomi, which are monosyllabic, and is unusual in the Chinese family of scripts, which generally use one character per syllable not only in Chinese, but also in Korean, Vietnamese, and Zhuang; polysyllabic Chinese characters are rare and considered non-standard. uketamawaru, kokorozashi, and mikotonori have five syllables represented by a single kanji, the longest readings in the Jy character set. These unusually long readings are due a single character representing a compound word. In detail, due respectively to being a single character for a compound verb, one component of which has a long reading (alternative spelling as u(ke)-tamawa(ru), hence (1+1)+3=5; compare common u(ke)-tsu(keru), to being a nominalization of the verb which has a long reading kokoroza(su) (due to being derived from a noun-verb compound, kokoro-za(su)), the nominalization removing the okurigana, hence increasing the reading by one mora, yielding 4+1=5 (compare common hanashi 2+1=3, from hana(su), and being a triple compound (alternative spelling mi-koto-nori, hence 1+2+2=5). Longer readings exist for non-Jy characters and non-kanji symbols, where a long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi see single character gairaigo, below) the character has the seven kana reading senchimtoru "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading psento. Further, some Jy characters have long non-Jy readings (students learn the character, ut not the reading), such as omonpakaru for .

In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word , naosu, when written , means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written it means "to fix or correct something". Sometimes the distinction is very clear, although not always. Differences of opinion among reference works is not uncommon; one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. As a result, native speakers of the language may have trouble knowing which kanji to use and resort to personal preference or by writing the word inhiragana. This latter strategy is frequently employed with more complex cases such as moto, which has at least five different kanji: , , , , and , the first three of which have only very subtle differences. Another notable example is sakazuki "sake cup", which may be spelt as at least five different kanji: , , /, and ; of these, the first two are common formally is a small cup and a large cup. Local dialectical readings of kanji are also classified under kun'yomi, most notably readings for words in Ryukyuan languages. Further, in rare cases gairaigo (borrowed words) have a single character associated with them, in which case this reading is formally classified as a kun'yomi, because the character is being used for meaning, not sound. This is discussed under other readings, below.

Mixed readings[edit]

A jbako (?), which has a mixed on-kun reading.

A yut (?), which has a mixed kun-on reading.

There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jbako (?, multilayered food box) or yut (?, hot liquid pail) words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words): the first character of jbako is read using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi (on-kun), while it is the other way around with yut (kun-on). Formally, these are referred to as jbako-yomi (?, jbako reading) and yut-yomi (?, yut reading). Note that in both these words, the on'yomi has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally come from Chinese, hence distinctive of on'yomi. These are the Japanese form of hybrid words. Other examples include basho "place" (kun-on), kin'iro "golden" (on-kun) and aikid "the martial art Aikido" (kun-onon).

Special readings[edit]
Gikun () and jukujikun () are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi, but rather are connected with their meaning this is the opposite of ateji. From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a nankun (?, difficult reading), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character. Gikun are when non-standard kanji are used, generally for effect, such as using with reading fuyu (, "winter"), rather than the standard character .Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound the word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, ("this morning") is jukujikun, and read neither as *ima'asa, the kun'yomi of the characters, nor konch, the on'yomi of the characters, nor any combination thereof. Instead it is read as kesaa native Japanese word with two syllables (which may be seen as a single morpheme, or as a fusion of ky (previously kefu), "today", and asa, "morning"). Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, and for some old borrowings, such as (shishamo, literally "willow leaf fish"), from Ainu, or (tabako, literally "smoke grass"), from Portuguese. Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually

written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana. Jukujikun are quite varied. Often the kanji compound for jukujikun is idiosyncratic and created for the word, with the corresponding Chinese word not existing; in other cases a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, with the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese; for example, (?, reindeer) is jukujikun for tonakai, from Ainu, but theon'yomi junroku is also used. In some cases Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese, such as ank (?, monkfish). The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji) or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation; for example sum (?, sumo) is originally from the verb suma-u (?, to vie), while ky (?, today) is fusional. In rare cases jukujikun is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. Examples of jukujikun for inflectional words follow. The most common example of a jukujikun adjective is kawai-i (?, cute), originally kawayu-i; the word (?) is used in Chinese, but the corresponding on'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, the jukujikun fusawa-shii (?, appropriate) and on'yomi s (?, appropriate) are both used; the -shii ending is because these were formerly a different class of adjectives. A common example of a verb with jukujikun is haya-ru (?, to spread, to be in vogue), corresponding to on'yomi ryk (?). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is yusuri (?, extortion), from yusu-ru (?, to extort), spelling from kysei (?, extortion). See and for many more examples. Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using usual kun'yomi; examples include omo-shiro-i (?, interesting) face-whitening and zurugashiko-i (?, sly). Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings. Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji, though in narrow usage "ateji" refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), rather than meaning and not sound (meaningspelling), as in jukujikun. Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began life as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally a single word will have many such kanji spellings; an extreme example is hototogisu (lesser

cuckoo), which may be spelt in a great many ways, including , , , , , , , , , , and many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems.

Single character gairaigo[edit]

In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language (gairaigo), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include pji (?, page), botan (?, button), zero (?, zero), and mtoru (?, meter). See list of single character gairaigo for more. These are classed as kun'yomi of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as ateji, which is the classification used when a gairaigo term is written as a compound (2 or more characters). However, unlike the vast majority of other kun'yomi, these readings are not native Japanese, but rather borrowed, so the "kun'yomi" label can be misleading. The readings are also written in katakana, unlike the usual hiragana for native kun'yomi. Note that most of these characters are for units, particularly SI units, in many cases using new characters (kokuji) coined during the Meiji period, such as kiromtoru (?, kilometer, "meter" + "thousand").

Other readings[edit]
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori (), which are mostly used for names (often given names), and are generally closely related to the kun'yomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.

When to use which reading[edit]

Although there are general rules for when to use on'yomi and when to use kun'yomi, the language is littered with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given character may have multiple kun'yomi or on'yomi. When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes words (multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings, rather than individual characters, and only guess readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word. Homographs exist, however, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot, requiring a glossary. For example, may be read either as ky "today (informal)" (special fused reading for native word) or askonnichi "these days (formal)" (on'yomi); in formal writing this will generally be read as konnichi. In some cases multiple readings are common, as in "pork soup", which is commonly pronounced both as ton-jiru (mixed on-kun) andbuta-jiru (kun-kun), with ton somewhat more common nationally. Inconsistencies abound for example gyu-niku "beef" and y-niku "mutton" have on-on readings, but butaniku "pork" and tori-niku "poultry" havekun-on readings.

The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by okurigana (hiragana characters that are part of the word) as used in native verbs and adjectives always indicates kun'yomi, while kanji compounds (kango) usually use on'yomi,which is usually kan-on; however, other on'yomi are also common, and kun'yomi are also commonly used in kango. For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their kun'yomi, though there are numerous exceptions. For example, "iron" is usually read with the on'yomi tetsu rather than the kun'yomi kurogane. Chinese on'yomi which are not the common kan-on one are a frequent cause of difficulty or mistakes when encountering unfamiliar words or for inexperienced readers, though skilled natives will recognize the word; a good example is ge-doku (?, detoxification, antipoison) (go-on), where (?) is usually instead read as kai. Okurigana are used with kun'yomi to mark the inflected ending of a native verb or adjective, or by convention note that Japanese verbs and adjectives are closed class, and do not generally admit new words (borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which are nouns, can form verbs by adding -suru (?, to do) at the end, and adjectives via -no or -na, but cannot become native Japanese vocabulary, which inflect). For example: aka-i "red", atara-shii "new", mi-ru "(to) see". Okurigana can be used to indicate which kun'yomi to use, as in ta-beru versus ku-u (casual), both meaning "(to) eat", but this is not always sufficient, as in , which may be read as a-ku orhira-ku, both meaning "(to) open". is a particularly complicated example, with multiple kun and on'yomi see okurigana: for details. Okurigana is also used for some nouns and adverbs, as in nasake "sympathy", kanarazu "invariably", but not for kane "money", for instance. Okurigana is an important aspect of kanji usage in Japanese; see that article for more information on kun'yomi orthography Kanji occurring in compounds are generally read using on'yomi, called jukugo in Japanese (though again, exceptions abound). For example, jh "information", gakk "school", and shinkansen "bullet train" all follow this pattern. This isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different pronunciations. "east" and "north" use the kun'yomi higashi and kita, being standalone characters, while "northeast", as a compound, uses the on'yomi hokut. This is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one on'yomi: is read as sei in sensei "teacher" but as sh in issh "one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; is read i when it means "simple", but as eki when it means "divination", both being on'yomi for this character. These rules of thumb have many exceptions. Kun'yomi compound words are not as numerous as those with on'yomi, but neither are they rare. Examples include tegami "letter", higasa "parasol", and the famous kamikaze "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as (also written ) karaage "Chinese-style fried chicken" and origami, although many of these can also be written with the okurigana omitted (for example, or ).

Similarly, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in isolation: ai "love", Zen, ten "mark, dot". Most of these cases involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion, although exceptions do occur. A lone may be read as kin "gold" or as kane "money, metal"; only context can determine the writer's intended reading and meaning. Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is , which can be read in three different ways: jzu (skilled), uwate (upper part), or kamite (stage left/house right). In addition, has the reading umai (skilled). More subtly, has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow": ashita (casual), asu (polite), and mynichi (formal). Furigana (reading glosses) is often used to clarify any potential ambiguities. Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example, (privately established, esp. school) and (city established) are both normally pronounced shi-ritsu; in speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciations watakushi-ritsu and ichi-ritsu. More informally, in legal jargon "preamble" and "full text" are both pronounced zen-bun, so may be pronounced mae-bun for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble [not 'whole text'] of the constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily using a kun'yomi for one character in a normally on'yomi term. As stated above, jbako and yut readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading are possible: on-on, kun-kun, kun-on and on-kun. Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo ( Tky) and Japan itself ( Nihon or sometimes Nippon) are read with on'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with kun'yomi: saka, Aomori, Hakone. Names often use characters and readings that are not in common use outside of names. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may not match that in the original. The Osaka () and Kobe () baseball team, the Hanshin () Tigers, take their name from the on'yomi of the second kanji of saka and the first of Kbe. The name of the Keisei () railway line, linking Tokyo () and Narita () is formed similarly, although the reading of from is kei, despite ky already being an on'yomi in the word Tky. Japanese family names are also usually read with kun'yomi: Yamada, Tanaka, Suzuki. Japanese given names often have very irregular readings although they are not typically considered jbako or yut, they often contain mixtures of kun'yomi, on'yomi and nanori, such as Daisuke [on-kun], Natsumi [kun-on]. Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the readings of given names do not follow any set rules and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a person's name without independent verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called

 su and Enjeru, quite literally "Earth" and "Angel"; neither are common names, and have normal readings chiky and tenshi respectively. Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make a good guess for most names. Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may differ widely from that used by Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's name, written , is pronounced as M Takut in Japanese. Today, Chinese names that aren't well known in Japan are often spelled in Katakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana. In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing ( rendaku), as in hitobito "people" (more often written with the iteration mark as ), but in rare cases the readings can be unrelated, as in tobi-haneru "hop around" (more often written ).

Pronunciation assistance[edit]
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as furigana, (small kana written above or to the right of the character) or kumimoji (small kanawritten in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners. It is also used in newspapers and manga (comics) for rare or unusual readings and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use furigana to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.

Spelling words[edit]
Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji wordwhether the pronunciation is known or not can be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanjiindeed there are many homophonous words, not simply individual characters, particularly for kango (with on'yomi). Easiest is to write the word outeither on paper or tracing it in the airor look it up (given the pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated), various techniques can be used. These include giving kun'yomi for charactersthese are often uniqueusing a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word kshinry (?, spice) via the words kaori (?, fragrance), kara-i (?, spicy), and in-ry (?, beverage)the first two use the kun'yomi, the third is a well-known compoundsaying "kaori, karai, ry as in inry."

Total number of kanji[edit]

The number of possible characters is disputed; in principle any Chinese character can be used as kanji, which often occurs with proper names or names of food. The Daikanwa Jiten contains about 50,000 characters, and this was thought to be comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries, such as the Yiti Zidian dictionary published in 2004 contain 100,000 or more characters,[citation needed] many consisting of obscure variants. The vast majority of these are not in common use in either Japan or China; as discussed below, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 characters are in common use in Japan, a few thousand more find occasional use, and a total of about 13,000 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.

Orthographic reform and lists of kanji[edit]

Main article: Japanese script reform

A young woman practicing kanji. Ukiyo-ewoodblock print by Ysh Chikano u, 1897

In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a series of orthographic reforms. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called (shinjitai). Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.

These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as hygaiji (?).

Kyiku kanji[edit]
Main article: Kyiku kanji The Kyiku kanji (, "education kanji") are 1,006 characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school. The number was 881 until 1981. The grade-level breakdown of the education kanji is known as the gakunen-betsu kanji haithy (), or the gakush kanji.

Jy kanji[edit]
Main article: Jy kanji The Jy kanji (, "regular-use kanji") are 2,136 characters consisting of all the Kyiku kanji, plus 1,130 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana. The Jy kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the Ty kanji (, "general-use kanji") introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the Jy kanji list was extended to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously Jinmeiy kanji; some are used to write prefecture names: , , , , , , , , , and .

Jinmeiy kanji[edit]
Main article: Jinmeiy kanji Since September 27, 2004, the Jinmeiy kanji (, "kanji for use in personal names") consist of 2,928 characters, containing the Jy kanji plus an additional 983 kanji found in people's names. There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term Jinmeiy kanji refers to all 2,928, and sometimes it only refers to the 983 that are only used for names.

Hygaiji[edit]
Main article: Hygaiji Hygaiji (?, "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in the jy kanji and jinmeiy kanji lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist.

Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji[edit]

The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Greek alphabet, Hindu-Arabic numerals, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:

JIS X 0208 (JIS X 0208:1997), the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.

JIS X 0212 (JIS X 0212:1990), a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete;

JIS X 0213 (JIS X 0213:2000), a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,695 additional kanji, of which 2,743 (all but 952) were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding;

JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.

Gaiji[edit]
Gaiji (), literally meaning "external characters", are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventionalglyph in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as well. Gaiji can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters. Both are a problem for information interchange, as the codepoint used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another. Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997, and JIS X 0213-2000 used the range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode" service, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters). Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets)[11][12] technology allows the creation of customized gaiji. The Text Encoding Initiative uses a <g> element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji.[13] (The g stands for "gaiji".[14])

Types of Kanji: by category[edit]

Main article: Chinese character classification Han Dynasty scholar Xu Shen in his ancient dictionary Shuowen Jiezi classified Chinese characters into six categories (Chinese: lish, Japanese: rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.

Shkei moji ()[edit]

Shkei (Chinese: xingxng) characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example, is an eye, while is a tree. (Shkei is also the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs). The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear

in oracle bone script and seal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.

Shiji moji ()[edit]

Shiji (Chinese: zhsh) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as "up" or "above" and "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Kaii moji ()[edit]

Kaii (Chinese: huy) characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is (rest) from (person) and (tree). Another is the kokuji (mountain pass) made from (mountain), (up) and (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Keisei moji ()[edit]

Keisei (Chinese: xngshng) characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so keisei moji will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all tokun'yomi. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.

Tench moji ()[edit]

Tench (Chinese: zhunzh) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different on'yomi, gaku 'music' and raku 'pleasure'.

Kasha moji ()[edit]

Kasha (Chinese: jiji) are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar sounding word. For example, in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat , originally meant "to come", being a keisei moji having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.

Related symbols[edit]
See also: Japanese typographic symbols The iteration mark () is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example (iroiro "various") and (tokidoki "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the surname Sasaki (). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji (variant of d "same"). Another abbreviated symbol is , in appearance a small katakana "ke", but actually a simplified version of the kanji , a general counter. It is pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as , rokkagetsu "six months") or "ga" in place names like Kasumigaseki (). .

Collation[edit]
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character , meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical meaning "tree". When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation. Other kanji sorting methods, such as the SKIP system, have been devised by various authors. Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kana representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The gojon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.

Kanji education[edit]

This image lists most joyo-kanji, according to Halpern's KLD indexing system, with kyo-iku kanji color-coded by grade level.

Japanese school children are expected to learn 1,006 basic kanji characters, the kyiku kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The kyiku kanji list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji characters, in 2010 extended to 2,136, known as the jy kanji characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade.[15] Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and radical. Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used in James Heisig's series Remembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's The

Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix, are also seen. The Japanese government provides the Kanji kentei ( Nihon kanji nryoku kentei shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude") which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests about 6,000 kanji.

1. What is Kanji?
Kanji means Chinese letter or character. The script was invented by the Chinese and adopted by the Japanese around the middle of the 6th century AD. Kanji are ideographs meaning that the whole character conveys a meaning rather than just a sound (as in the case of hiragana and katakana letters). Kanji were originally drawn as pictures from nature but gradually transformed to more generalized representations. By the end of year nine Japanese students will have learned 1945 kanji as prescribed by the Japanese Ministry of Education (the Jouyou Kanji). There are many many more less commonly used kanji totaling over 5000. ReadWrite Kanji teaches the 1945 prescribed kanji in the order in which that are taught to Japanese students. More on kanji can be found at the bottom of the page.

Kanji can be written in various styles. There is the character for "good" written in a number of styles.

Learn about the Japanese phonetic hiragana script here. Learn about the Japanese phonetic katakana script here.

2. What are Kanji Radicals?

All kanji contain a classifying radical that is a component of the kanji. Often the radical imparts meaning to the kanji - for example the radical for hand appears in both of the kanji that combine to form the word "grasp" () and the individual kanji for "throw" (). Recognizing a kanji's radical often helps in memorising or deciphering the meaning of the kanji. Most kanji dictionaries classify kanji according to their radicals. Therefore recognising the radial of an unknown kanji helps with looking it up in a dictionary. Japanese kanji has 214 different radicals (the Bushu index). Radicals can appear almost anywhere in a kanji - at the top, on the left, on the right, at the bottom and surrounding (enclosing).

This is the for "harbour" with the radical for water highlighted in red.

Here is the character for "country" with the radical for "outh, opening, sounding highlighted in red.

Here is the character for "big" - it is classified as a radical itself.

See below for the complete list of the 214 busho radicals.

3. What are ON Pronunciations?

In Japanese there is generally more than one pronunciation of a kanji. The ON pronunciation (onyomi) is taken from the Chinese pronunciation and the KUN pronunciation ( kunyomi) which is derived from the indigenous Japanese pronunciation of the same word/meaning. Most kanji compounds (words made up of two or more kanji) are built up from the the individual kanji onyomi. For example:

The onyomi: zi-dou-sha combine to mean car or automobile

- zi meaning self - dou meaning move - sha meaning vehicle or cart

4. What are KUN Pronunciations?

In Japanese there is generally more than one pronunciation of a kanji. The ON pronunciation ( onyomi) is taken from the Chinese pronunciation and the KUN pronunciation (kunyomi) which is derived from the indigenous Japanese pronunciation of the same word/meaning. When the kunyomi pronunciation is used the kanji usually stands alone and is not part of a compound. For example:

- hito meaning person - tori meaning bird - yumi meaning dream

5. More about Kanji?

Kanji are characters that were developed as part of the writing system used among the Asian countries, especially China. It is generally said that those people using Kanji are the largest race on earth. It is not certain when and where Kanji first appeared. However, the oldest pattern like characters resembling some sort of symbols were carved on fragments of earthenware and have been excavated from the ruins of ancient China (4500 BC). The symbols on these ruins, classified into 22 patterns, have still not been deciphered, but it is widely believed that these symbols were a form of notification, that is, a prototype of a character. In the time of the Chinese ancient state of IN, which rose in approximately 1600 BC, the king or ruler used the custom of fortune telling to make political predictions by burning tortoise shells or animal bones and observing the cracks that formed in the shells or bones. Then, in order to record the results of the fortune telling, a character called, KOUKOTUMOJI ("inscription on bones and tortoise carapaces"), was inscribed on the shells and bones. This is the prototype of the present Kanji character. Thus, was created, the manner in which the precious data in assuming the politics and social state of the Chinese ancient state of IN was recorded and kept. Later, in 1300 BC, when the ancient Chinese state of IN reached its golden period, known as the Bronze Age, KINBUN ("a gold letter"), having a softer impression than the character, KOUKOTUMOJI, appeared. KOUKOTUMOJI was initially created as pictograph, that is, as an ideogram. Yet, in the later period, the expression for more abstract phenomenon was systemized. It is interesting to note that our present-day phonetic alphabet has its origins in the ideography of ancient Mesopotamia (an ancient country in West Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; now part of Iraq)-known as another birthplace of civilization. The ancient Mesopotamians made adaptations to their ideographic notations in order to transcribe into a written form the spoken languages of neighboring nations and races. During the process of this transcription, it is believed that the ideogram was converted to phonetic symbols. In addition, it has been suggested that the KOUKOTUMOJI character, which was initially in the form of an ideogram, was actually derived from the Sumerian cuneiform drawings. This is an interesting theory, because it is believed that the concept of writing existed in the Middle East's fertile crescent (present day Southern Iraq) long before China started its own method of writing. History records that that the Sumerian civilization mysteriously vanished. However, it is possible that the Sumerians ended up in China because recent objects resembling Sumerian objects have been found in Northern China. After centuries of individually ruled kingdoms, China was unified into a single territory with the start of the SHIN dynasty in 221 BC. The first emperor of China, referred to as SHIKOUTEI, appeared and united all of China for the first time. The emperor aimed to create a standard of weights and measurements (units such as length and capacity), as well as, unify a written character for the reign. The style of writing enacted during this reign is called SYOUTEN and was carried out long after as a formal character in China. This style of writing was primarily used to inscribe nationwide important archives on a stone, as well as, for political documents. It would thus, be reasonable to think that this writing style is a principal vestige for today's seal engraving. However, the formal character was not easy to hand down from generation to generation as Kanji had a complicated typeface. It was thus destined for the character to develop into a character that could be written faster and memorized easier. Gradually, SYOUTEN turned into a form that was more straight-lined and easier to write, called REISYO. Around the second century, the writing style evolved further into KAISYO. The writing materials of the REISYO period were changed from stone to thin bars of bamboo or wood called CHIKKAN or MOKKAN. Then, when paper was finally invented, a style was developed that could supply the demand for much more and faster writing. Thus, through this history, Kanji was developed as a form of artwork because the writing could bear the penmanship of many clerics. Soon, the period of wood engraving printings, such as those found in the Buddhist scripture came to being. A period of mud printing type also emerged and the writing style became even simpler and more linear. In the eleventh century, known as SOU era, a writing style called MINCCYOUTAI

originated. Later this writing style was regulated in the MIN era. This fixed form is almost the same as the present style. To accommodate an easier writing style in China today, a mainstream for common documents was developed in the simple style script known as KANTAIJI. However, in the case of Kanji, the writing style from the ancient or modern times has not disappeared at all and it can be said that it is still alive in the world of art.

6. The Bushu Classification of the Radicals?

Radical Meaning one; a horizontal stroke a vertical stroke a dot a stroke curved to the left a bend stroke; the second of celestial stems a hook two; two horizontal strokes head, above man, a person man, a person (at the bottom of a character) entering, starting eight; to part, to divide wilderness cover two dots; ice, cold small table wide opened mouth knife, sword, cutting, separating strength, force embracing spoon, ladle square box round box ten; two crossed strokes divining seal, stamp cliff self, private grasping, further, again mouth, opening, sounding enclosure earth, soil Bushu Index 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 Radical Meaning plate eye spear arrow stone, rock spiritual, ancestor animal stamping the earth grain ear hollow, hole, hidden stand, erect bamboo rice thread, fabric crock, vessel net sheep, goat wings old moustache; but, and handle of a plough ear brush meat, organs of the body servant, subject nose, self arrive mortar tongue lying side by side boat, ship simple, honest, straight color, outlook

official, scholar walking slowly overtaking evening big, large woman child, son; the first of terrestrial branches roof, cover inch small broken or curved leg corpse, body sprout mountain, cliff river, stream work self, own; the sixth of celestial stems towel, napkin shield small, young house built at a slope walking a long distance two hands (at bottom of character) shooting crossbow pig head hair, feather walking slowly heart, feeling axe, halberd house, door hand, actions branch whip word, literature a kind of volume measure a kind of weight measure; axe square, direction, locality do not, no sun, clear speaking moon, month tree, wood missing, gap stopping evil

140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185

grass, herb, plant tiger insect, creeping animal blood walk, row, line, journey clothing cover seeing horn; a kind of volume measure speaking valley bean; a kind of vessel pig small hairy animals cowry snail red walking foot, leg, walking body cart bitter; the eighth of celectial stems morning; the fifth of terrestrial branches stamping on the earth, going village wine, jar; the tenth of terrestrial branches distiguishing, separating mile, hamlet metal, gold long, hair door hill, dam reaching, catching small bird rain bluegreen wings; not face skin, leather, changing tanned leather chives, scallion sound page, face wind flying eating head

halberd mother side by side, comparing hair, feather clan air, breath water fire claw, hand father crossing two times bed slice, piece teeth cow, ox dog, dog-like animals black, dark jade, stone pumpkin, melon tile, earthenware sweet giving birth, living using field roll, bolt sick two hands above white leather, skin

186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214

odor, perfume horse bone high, aloft hair battle offering spirits a kind of vessel ghost, spirit fish bird salt deer grain hemp yellow millet black needlework frog, amphibium tripod drum mouse, rat nose, self equal, all teeth dragon turtle flute

Japanese Kanji
Between 5,000 and 10,000 characters, or kanji, are used in written Japanese. In 1981 in an effort to make it easier to read and write Japanese, the Japanese government introduced the (jy kanji hy) or the "List of Chinese Characters for General Use", which includes 1,945 regular characters, plus additional characters used for people's names ( - jinmeiy-kanji). This is based on the list of 1,850 regular use kanji ( ty kanji) published in 1946. In 2010 an additional 196 commonly-used kanji were added to the jy kanji taking the total to 2,136. Newpapers and other media and publications use mainly jy kanji and provide furigana (reading in kana) for non-jy kanji. Japanese children are expected to know all of the jy kanji by the end of

high school but to read specialist publications and ordinary literature, they need to know another two or three thousand kanji. The word kanji is the Japanese version of the Chinese word hnz, which means "Han characters". Han refers to the Han Dynasty (206BC - 220AD) and is the name used by the Chinese for themselves. When the Japanese adopted Chinese characters to write the Japanese language they also borrowed many Chinese words. Today about half the vocabulary of Japanese comes from Chinese and Japanese kanji are use to represent both Sino-Japanese words and native Japanese words with the same meaning. For example, the native Japanese word for water is mizu while the Sino-Japanese word is sui. Both are written with the same character. The former is known as the kun yomi (Japanese reading) of the character while the latter is known as the on yomi (Chinese reading) of the character.

Another example: the native Japanese word for horse is uma while the Sino-Japanese words are ba and ma.

The characters in the word baka, which mean "horse deer", are used for their phonetic values alone. The word comes from the Sanskrit moha - ignorance, via the Chinese mh. Click hereto see how the character for horse is used in Chinese. The general rule is that when a kanji appears on its own, it is given the kun yomi, but when two or more kanji appear together, they are given the on yomi. There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule. For example it is sometimes difficult to work out how to pronounce people's names because some of the kanji used for names have non-standard pronunciations. Some kanji have multiple on yomi and kun yomi (the first three readings are on yomi, the last three are kun yomi):

In Mandarin Chinese this character is pronounced 'xng' or 'hng'. Multiple on yomi are often a result of borrowing words over a period of many centuries, during which Chinese pronunciation changed, and also borrowing words from different varieties of Chinese. Some of the kanji have been simplified, although not always in the same way as characters have been simplified in China:

There are also a number of characters, kokuji (national characters) which were invented in Japan.