#ask:kanji

[jvocab-of-the-day]

alicedelarge said:

 Isn’t すみalso a way of reading it?

Yes 角 can also be read as すみ, but I think it isn't listed as a main reading since it is an abnormality/exception from the official readings. It is a common reading though ^^

[jvocab-of-the-day]

Quick question! Would the Kanji for bow (弓) also be used for musical instrument bows as well? (The bows used for string instruments such as violins, violas, and cellos)

Yes! It can refer to those kinds of bows too :)

[jvocab-of-the-day]

I know you're busy, but I was curious about the difference between the kanji outside of the parenthesis versus the ones inside. Is one formal and one informal?

Hi, I’m not sure which parenthesis you mean? Does this show up in your dictionary or..? ><

[jvocab-of-the-day]

There seems to be something wrong with the last kanji you post (the one for movie etc) it looks like it is missing a line connecting the top horizontal line to the box below, I guess it could be the font but it doesn't look right)

Hm yeah you’re right.. I think it’s just the font though. Sometimes it makes the kanjis look funny. Just so people don’t get confused, the kanji is typed here looks like 画, but should really look like this with the vertical line in the middle starting from the very top when writing it:

Thanks for pointing that out I can see how that could potentially confuse people!

[jvocab-of-the-day]

kinzychan replied to your chat: KOTD: 力

Isn’t that just ‘ka’ in katakana? How do you know when to say Ka or Chikara?

You're right they look extremely similar! But depending on the context I think it should be pretty easy to figure out. For example if there is other kanji around it, it is probably kanji and not just a random katakana. Same goes for if it is surrounded by katakana. For example if you were reading the word カタカナ you would assume that it was ka since chikara wouldn't make sense.

[jvocab-of-the-day]

Hi i have just been learning Japanese for a few months, and am now really confused as to what to do next, i know all of the Kana but was just wondering how you went about it after that, if it would be better for me to progress my vocab o if i should just start learning kanji? Thankyou for your help (sorry if this is a bother)

Hello there!

In my experience, I think that I just started kanji when it was introduced in my textbook. After the chapters on hiragana/katakana and after learning all the common and basic vocab/grammar, it started to go back and teach the kanjis for some of the basic words I already knew. For example, 食べる (たべる) or 飲む (のむ). I think that if you are already pretty confident with basic grammar forms and have a pretty solid vocabulary of like basic verbs and nouns, you should definitely start learning kanji. However, if you aren’t, it might be a bit overwhelming and I would suggest building up your vocab/grammar first. I can’t really say some sort of general thing like when you reach this point you should do this; I think it is more about how you feel and how confident you are to take the next step. Don’t rush yourself.

In my case, my book would include a new kanji section just like the new vocab section at the end of the chapters. Sometimes the words they represented were new, sometimes they were familiar, but I just learned them at the pace they were given to me. Once you think you are ready to take that next step, I think it is important to learn all the new vocab and kanji from each chapter at the same time. They are like supplements which go together and will help your reading in the long run. They give you certain things to learn together at certain times because it all goes together. If you were to just learn kanji or to just learn vocab I feel like you would have to constantly go back and forth and your studies would overlap. For example, if you learned new vocab you would have to go back after learning it to learn their kanji. It’s better to learn new words with their kanji at the same time so that association will stick in your head from the start. Also your Japanese will improve as a whole if you study all aspects of it at the same time. Knowing kanji will give you a feel of how real sentences look like, and knowing new vocab will help you understand more sentences. Your writing especially will improve and will look more like real native Japanese.

Overall, I would say to just trust your textbook (especially if you are self learning). If you don’t know japanese it is really hard to know where to start and which kanji to learn first. Textbooks purposely give you certain sets of kanji and vocab at certain times because they know what level you are and what you can handle at that level. They also provide the kanji readings you really need to know, whereas if you learned on your own you would not know which readings were the main. I used several different books including “Japanese for Young People” and “Genki”. I really like the genki series so if you aren’t sure what book is good I would definitely recommend that! Sorry if this is really long and you are not a bother at all^^ Hopefully this post helped somewhat.. Feel free to message me anytime if you have more questions. Also good luck on your kanji studies!