Kanji
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Kanji (漢字, meaning literally "Chinese characters") is one of the three writing systems used to write Japanese, along with Hiragana and Katakana. The kanji do not represent syllables like the other writing systems, but rather ideas or words.
Kanji were imported from Chinese characters many centuries ago. With the course of the centuries, many differences were introduced, so nowadays there are differences between Chinese characters and Japanese kanji. They are generally more complex than kana.
Kanji have two groups of "readings", or ways to pronounce them. "On-yomi" (音読み) readings are based on Japanese interpretations of the original Chinese readings of characters. They are typically used when the kanji is part of a compound. "Kun-yomi" (訓読み) readings, on the other hand, are generally used when the kanji is used in its own. However, there are exceptions to this rule.
A kanji character can have several "kun" readings and several "on" readings, and they often have at least one of each kind, but there are characters with only "on" or only "kun" readings.
As an example, let's consider the character 風. Its "on" readings are "FUU" and "FU" ("on" readings are often shown in capitals, and "kun" readings in lower case), and its "kun" reading is "kaze". When standing alone, this character is read "kaze" and means "wind" or "manner". But in compounds, it is read "fuu" or "fu", such as in 台風 (taifuu), "typhoon", お風呂 (ofuro), "bath" or 古風 (kofuu), "old-fashioned".
Since Chinese kanji were adopted for already extant Japanese words, there are some idiosyncracies in "kun" readings in particular. Using the above, example, sometimes the character 風 is read as "ka." The reason is that the Japanese word for "a head cold" is also "kaze" -- presumably the original Japanese idiom was "to catch a wind," but in Chinese this was not the case, so when kanji began being used, the Chinese characters for "a head cold" (風邪) were read as "kaze" as well.
>> Languages >> Japanese >> Japanese writing systems
>> General resources >> Writing systems
See also Wikipedia(kanji)
