#kanjiblr

[nihongoaesthetic]

爪やすり 「つめやすり」 💅🏾 Nail file 💅🏻

💅🏻

この爪やすりは荒いです。

この「つめすり」は「あらい」です。

This nail file is rough.

[notsodailykanji]

Put Down Your Pen

Inhale for 4 seconds.

Hold your breath for 7 seconds.

Exhale for 8 seconds*

Repeat a further 3 times.

*Make an “O” (pout) with your mouth while you exhale. 

This breathing exercise is a great stress reliever. So now that I’ve gotten you to take a quick break from your studies, take a moment to appreciate how far you’ve come on your journey. Think for a moment on how little you knew before you started, and how much you know now. Imagine that in a years time, you might know twice as much as you do now. Let that inspire you.

[nihongoaesthetic]

雨「あめ」☔ rain 🌧

☔🌧

例「れい」(example):

雨はいい音です。

「あめ」はいい「おと」です。

The sound of rain is nice.

[notsodailykanji]

@ishida-kun121 Recently asked where I got my practice drill sheets for katakana. Initially I had planned just to reply to them, but I realised that all of my followers might not know about the drill sheets I use, or in fact have any. As someone who wants to learn to write Japanese as well, it’s important to me that I practice kana and kanji writing. So, here’s three drill sheets that I use from time to time. These sheets aren’t perfect, and there are others that may suit you better. 

As one final note: Even though I myself struggle not to criticise myself too harshly, PLEASE remember that your hand writing doesn’t have to be as perfect as what’s on these sheets. If you’ve ever seen a native Japanese persons handwriting (and I have) you’d know that handwriting is the same in every language: different for everyone. Everyone has their own unique way of writing a kana, it’s always going to look a little different. However, as long as the general shape and stroke order is the same, it’ll be readable. Don’t worry about trying to achieve the robotic perfection that’s on these sheets.

Hiragana

Katakana

Kanji

[notsodailykanji]

What’s “kun-yomi” and “on-yomi”?

Hey there! 

Firstly, thanks for the question. I’ll try and keep my answer concise, but I’ll also link some more detailed explanations on various websites if you’re interested in the full story.

History:

To understand what “kun-yomi” and “on-yomi” are, you first need to understand the origin of the Kanji system used by the Japanese language today. Kanji were imported to Japan a very, very long time ago from China. They are the writing system used by China. However, because Chinese and Japanese used very different sounds, the pronunciation of the original chinese kanji was not conserved exactly. Hence, every kanji was associated with at least two readings; one reading which matched the chinese sound as closely as possible, the on-yomi reading, and a second reading which represented the native Japanese reading for the concept, the kun-yomi reading. To illustrate this point, I’ll use the kanji 山 as an example.

Sidenote: In dictionaries and learning resources it is customary to always write the on-yomi reading first as a mark of respect and acknowledgement as to the original origin of kanji (China), however for the ease of explanation I’ll write the kun-yomi reading first this time.

Readings: 

Kun-yomi: Taking the example kanji 山, meaning “mountain” - the Japanese made an association between the meaning of the kanji, i.e “mountain” and the word they already used to describe a mountain, やま。Hence, this is the kun-yomi reading - a reading which matches the concept of a kanji with the native Japanese word to describe it.

On-yomi: The Japanese then adopted a second reading for the Kanji to match the native Chinese reading as closely as possible. When the Chinese see the character 山, they read it as something equivalent to さん。Hence, this is the on-yomi reading. However, since Japanese uses different sounds to Chinese, the pronunciation can still differ slightly from the true native Chinese reading.

山：Mountain

On-yomi: さん 

Kun-yomi: やま

Does Any of This Even Matter?

Yes. As a general rule, the kun-yomi reading for a kanji is used when it appears on its own, but when multiple kanji appear together in a compound, the on-yomi reading is used. However, this is not a golden rule and there are always exceptions. It’s best to take it more as a rule of thumb and learn the critical exceptions for each kanji as you encounter them. The bottom line: If you want to understand and read complex Japanese words and sentences, you absolutely must know both readings.

I’m far from an expert on this matter, and I don’t feel like I’ve really done the matter justice, so I highly suggest you read the material found in the links below to get a more consolidated account of the history and mechanics around the kanji reading system. At any rate, I hope this helps!

Bibliography:

Wikipedia

Tofugu

NihongoMaster

Learn Japanese Adventure

Youtube Videos:

1

2

3

[notsodailykanji]

PSA

Friendly reminder: “Good” note-taking isn’t always “Neat/Tidy” note-taking. I see a lot of studyblrs post images of extremely well organised and laid-out notes for studying. These are truly works of art and they’re lovely to look at, but I think a lot of people get discouraged in the process of studying and taking notes because they don’t think their notes are “good enough” or “neat enough”. To this, I say nay.

Some neat notes can actually be really ineffective for studying because they focus too much on aesthetics and not enough on the practicality of absorbing information on the page. On the flipside, it’s true that really disorganised notes may make it equally as hard to assimilate the information they contain. What’s most important is striking a balance, and finding a style that works for you. Spending 2 hours writing only 10 lines probably isn’t a good use of your time. Equally, writing 50 lines in 2 minutes probably means you’ll never be able to make sense of the information you just wrote. The best notes are not necessarily the neatest, but instead they’re the ones where you simply find it easiest to remember and learn information when studying/revising. 

Remember that learning should be fun, even if it is still hard work. If you ever find yourself getting depressed or heavily discouraged in the process of note-taking, it’s a good sign that the approach you’re taking isn’t right for you. This isn’t your fault, it just means that you may need to try and adjust your note format to something that you find easier to write and more fun and engaging to read. Furthermore, good notes aren’t always “written” notes - the best learning regime involes a combination of reading, listening, and speaking, so play around and find the combination what works best for you. You don’t have to learn a language the same way as everyone else, what matters is that you choose your own path that makes it possible for you to make the journey at your own pace.

I hope some of you find some solace in this information, as I know I too struggle with note-taking. I myself sometimes feel discouraged because I don’t think my notes are “good/neat enough” - I think everyone can empathise with that feeling.

[notsodailykanji]

Hi! Your blog is absolutely great, it got me in the frame of mind to start practising Japanese again, so thank you! ^_^ I have a question about studying hiragana/katakana (ik this blog is kanji but I assumed you're pretty good at kana too?) : how does one become fast at reading? I know all the kana characters, but it takes a while to decode things, even without trying to translate at the same time. Maybe I just need to practise more? Do you have any methods for speedier reading? Thanks again!

Firstly, I’m honoured to have motivated you in your studies! I think my blog is only a humble affair but I’m glad to have been some help.

I may be wrong, but I’m going to make a deduction based on what you said that may get to the heart of the issue. If the following assumptions that I make are way off the mark, forgive me. If you’re like me, you’ll have prioritised learning kana, and then vocabulary and maybe some grammar, whilst probably leaving kanji to one side, largely untouched. The result of this is that you might know a lot of vocabulary in kana, but not in kanji, and trying to read sentences entirely in kana can be very difficult because kana alone does not give you many “cues”. Let me give you an example.

なんじですか？　

Now, you probably now this phrase inside out, and most other people reading this could probably guess at the meaning of that sentence. Of course, it means “What time is it?”. You can probably seperate the words into なん、じ、ですか？. The reason you can easily disect all of that hiragana into seperate words is because you learned them seperately. And for small sentences, this works fine. However, the real problem with trying to read a sentence entirely in hiragana is that there is no “cues”. You can’t obviously tell whether the first word is なん or なんじ just by looking at the sentence - but you know because you’ve learned it. Again, in small sentences, this doesn’t pose much of a challenge, but when it comes to reading larger sentences in entire paragraphs of text, the lack of “cues” to tell you where one word ends and the next one begins becomes far more problematic. Let’s look at a more complex sentence. 

さんじからよんじまでテストがある。

Already, it becomes more difficult to see where one word ends and the next begins because kana doesn’t offer any reading cues. Is it じから or is it じ、から? Immediately when I see a sentence written all in kana, this is the struggle I face. I waste half my time trying to figure out where each word is so that I can say the sentence correctly, and instead of being able to read it fluently in one go, it’s more of a case of patch-work until I figure it all out word by word and then read the entire sentence again. From the way you phrased your question it seems as though the reason why you read slowly is because of an over-dependence on kana. We’re all guilty of this in the early stages, especially in the weird “more than a beginner but not quite intermediate” phase, where we know far more kana than kanji. Let’s have a look at that same sentence again, but this time by replacing most of the kana with the equivalent kanji.

三時から四時までテストがある。

三時から四時までテストがある。

三時から、四時まで、テストがある (Comma to indicate change in cadence)

三時　= 3 o’clock. 

から　= from 

四時　= 4 o’clock

まで　= until

テスト　= test

がある　= to exist

“There is a test from 3 o’clock to 4 o’clock.

Replacing all of that kana with kanji helps me find the cues for the words in the sentence. By using kanji, the words から、まで、and the particle が all stand out from the rest and provide a frame of reference. In this way, I know that the first word is 三時 and that it does not include から. I know that the second word must begin after から, and that it ends before まで, so I read 四時 as one word. Besdes that, after learning the compound kanji 四時, you’ll be able to recognise that it is a distinct word very easily, however with kana this is much more difficult. These cues help me avoid running one word into another and getting confused about where one ends and the next begins. It can be hard to get into the swing of this at first, but with practice you’ll find a natural cadence that would be extremely difficult to achieve if only just reading the sentence in kana. If you look carefully you’ll find that the majority of sentences with kanji are split up in this way, between particles, words that don’t use kanji, and also furigana.

In Summary:

My advice is to try and “pair up” the vocabulary you already know in kana to the equivalent kanji and try reading sentences with kanji in them. With practice, your brain will be much quicker at recognising a two/three kanji compound instead of large words written in kana characters. By translating more and more of your kana vocabulary to kanji, your reading speed will increase, as well as your overall literacy. You’ll also find that when speaking sentences aloud, you come closer to the natural cadence of a Japanese speaker by using kanji, as these cues are present in native speech.Granted, it’s going to take a long time. I myself am in the process of this journey because I’ve learned a lot of vocabulary without learning the equivalent kanji.

Well, I hope you found this helpful. If I completely missed what you were trying to ask exactly, feel free to get in touch again and I’ll try for round 2. :P

[notsodailykanji]

Kanji Dictionary

As with anything Japanese, we’re spoiled for choice. A quick check on amazon revealed a dizzying amount of different kanji dictionaries. Does anyone in the know which are good and which are bad? Recommendations?