Basic Japanese Kanji Volume 1. Timothy G. Stout
characters to represent Japanese words and ideas, but also adopted many Chinese words and their pronunciation (or their best approximation of them). Today, although the meanings of many kanji characters are mutually understood by Japanese and Chinese people, the pronunciations are somewhat different.
As you encounter each kanji notice the different meanings and pronunciations that it may have. For instance, in the example on page 4 the kanji 食 (food, eat) would include た(べる) and ショク. But rather than learning these pronunciations in isolation, they are presented in meaningful vocabulary items. Not all kanji have both Japanese and Chinese pronunciations, and sometimes they have additional special pronunciations. This is a challenging part of learning Japanese kanji, but if you try to learn the example vocabulary it will make this task less challenging.
This book teaches the most useful 3 to 6 vocabulary associated with each character, or about 1,000 vocabulary items in total. The words with the kun-yomi or Japanese pronunciation are introduced first in most cases. Students are often familiar with these words and only need to learn the kanji. The words with on-yomi or Chinese pronunciations tend to be more advanced, and they are presented second.
How to Write Kanji Characters
There are few better ways to learn kanji characters than by simply writing them by hand over and over. Using the correct type of line makes your characters look accurate and authentic. There are five basic types of lines: stops, abbreviated stops, sweeps, stop-sweeps, and checks.
1. Stop: This is a line that comes to a stop before the writing tool is removed from the page. Stops come in varying lengths and directions, and some even change direction midway.
2. Abbreviated Stop: This line is shorter than a regular stop, and sometimes looks like a dot.
3. Sweep: This is a line that tapers off as the writing tool is gradually removed from the paper.
4. Stop sweep: This line stops midway, changes direction, and then tapers off like a sweep. This leaves the end of the line a bit thicker than the rest of it.
5. Check: This line is made by removing the writing tool from the paper, as it changes direction, leaving a hook-shaped mark on the end of the line.
Kanji Stroke Order
Not only do students need to use the correct types of lines, they also need to write them in the correct order. Using correct stroke order makes your kanji look natural, particularly when writing them quickly. Experienced Japanese writers can tell when a kanji has been written out of order.
In this book the correct stroke order is provided with each new kanji character. Note these stroke order sections carefully. Like hiragana and katakana, kanji are usually written from left to right and from top to bottom. There are several general rules for writing kanji:
• Kanji are written from left to right. [川 is a useful example; see p. 40.]
• Kanji are written from top to bottom. [三, 言; see pp. 12 and 122.]
• When horizontal and vertical lines cross, the horizontal line goes first, and then the vertical line. [十, 未; see pp. 18 and 274.]
• When there is a left-middle-right arrangement and the middle is the longest, it is written first. [小, 水; see pp. 62 and 32.]
• When outside lines surround a character, the outside lines are written first. [月; see p. 30.]
• When the center of a kanji is surrounded by a box, the center is written before the bottom line. [日, 田, 国; see pp. 30, 38 and 218.]
• Lines that cover the outside, but not the top, are written last. [近; see p. 84.]
Some kanji do not follow these general rules, so pay careful attention to the stroke order sequence of each kanji as it is introduced. Using correct stroke order may seem awkward or unnatural at first, but it makes a big difference in the way the kanji look to Japanese people. With practice you will soon be producing natural looking kanji characters without having to think about stroke order at all.
The writing practice boxes in this book are on the small side, which can be helpful to some learners in keeping their strokes’ lengths and relative positions more precise and consistent. But if you find that the larger writing spaces available in the lessons’ Practice sections work better for you, remember that you should feel free to practice your writing on separate sheets of paper. It’s impossible to practice your character writing too much!
Focus on Meaning
As you learn Japanese kanji characters you will be developing skills that are shared among over 1.5 billion people, including Japanese, Chinese, and others. One reason that alphabet-based writing systems have not replaced these characters is because of several advantages they have. One such advantage is a focus on meaning. In English, for example, readers can pronounce most words, but occasionally need to look up the meaning in a dictionary. In Japanese, on the other hand, readers occasionally come across characters they cannot pronounce, but they understand the meaning, so they do not need to stop reading to look it up.
The aim of this book is to help you master the most important kanji for beginners, particularly to be able to read more and more materials in Japanese. You will naturally be able to read more characters than you be able to write. As you focus on the meaning, you will be able to read and comprehend many sentences you may not be able to write, let alone read aloud. In each lesson you will encounter several reading passages that will help you practice this skill.
Do not worry if you cannot pronounce every character in the reading passages. Understanding the meaning of the characters is more important for reading. You will know this skill is developing, if you can answer the reading comprehension questions correctly.
Contents of the CD-ROM
To download, please click here.
The CD-ROM contains a program for reviewing the kanji characters introduced in this book. It has a vocabulary quiz section and a reading comprehension section. Using a multiple-choice format, you can get immediate, interactive feedback on how well you are progressing through each lesson.
In addition to the quiz program, the CD-ROM also contains a set of flash cards for all of the kanji characters and vocabulary introduced in this book, and a few extra vocabulary items as a bonus. The front displays the kanji and the useful vocabulary associated with it, and the back displays the corresponding hiragana, romaji, and English for each card.
The card files are provided in two different page setups, so that you may select your preferred way of printing them. One set is formatted to print double-sided if your printer allows that (i.e., the card “pages” are sequenced with each card-fronts page followed immediately