Tuttle Learning Japanese Kanji. Glen Nolan Grant
words and compounds” table in each entry: any word or compound consisting of kanji you have already learned will be shown in bold face. This will allow you to focus on reviewing those words you have previously encountered. One useful way to review would involve covering up the right-hand columns in the table with your hand or a piece of paper, then drawing it back to reveal the individual kanji meanings, pronunciation, and the overall meaning of the word in question.
In order to make your task a bit more manageable – you’ll be mastering 520 of the most important kanji in Japanese, after all! – the book is divided into chapters of 20 to 30 entries each. This will allow you to periodically review a reasonable number of characters before proceeding onward. Short review sections at the end of each chapter will help you check your learning, along with cumulative exercises following Chapters 5, 10, 16 and 22. Use these reviews to see exactly how far you’ve come in your mastery of the kanji, and to find out which entries to return to for more practice, if you need it. You’ll find answer keys, along with indices listing kanji by stroke count, English meaning and pronunciation at the end of the book. Remember that all of the on-yomi are presented in katakana and employ upper-case Roman letters for romaji. The kun-yomi are written with hiragana, and have lower-case Roman letters for romaji.
To add an audio aspect to your kanji learning, the accompanying
Learning to read kanji is fascinating; the characters, so different from those used in our own writing system, have a mysterious quality that attracts everyone who studies Japanese. As you progress through this book and see how kanji are easily able to present even the most complex ideas, it is worth keeping in mind that you are not only setting out to learn a new means of written communication, but another way of conceptualizing the world around you. It’s an exciting task, and by using the present book as your guide you will find this process to be not only interesting, but fun. So let’s jump right in – and start learning Japanese kanji!
CHAPTER ONE
KANJI #1—20
KANJI #1
| 山 | MOUNTAIN |
Meaning
Mountain. Our first kanji is one of those wonderful characters whose meaning is obvious at a glance. As kanji such as these are best learned from a simple picture, there is no need for an accompanying story. A number of characters in the book will fall into this category.
Common Pronunciations
Common ON reading: SAN (サン)
Common kun reading: yama (やま)
This kanji has only one on-yomi and one kun-yomi (the pronunciation of which – together with all others in this book – can be heard on the accompanying
We now need to link the meaning of the kanji to its sounds by using the words “mountain”, “sandwich”, and “yam appetizer” in a sentence. Let’s try this: I had a yam appetizer and a SANDWICH on the Mountain. For future review, write this sentence in the box below.
Now for some common words that make use of this kanji. There’s no need to worry for the moment about being unable to recognize the other characters, as they will all be learned over the course of the book; at this stage, try to see how the meanings of individual kanji combine to form more complex words (look especially at the fourth example below). This is a useful skill, as it will help foster an intuitive feel for the meanings of unfamiliar compounds that you encounter in the future. It is also one of the most rewarding aspects of learning to read the language. Understanding the logic that went into the formation of a compound not only makes it easier to remember, but offers fascinating insight into the minds of the people who devised it hundreds – if not thousands – of years earlier.
Remember that the uppercase letters and katakana here indicate on-yomi, with lowercase letters and hiragana indicating kun-yomi. Recall as well from the introduction that this is our first instance of a character whose unvoiced reading can sometimes become voiced (in examples 3 - 4, where the on-yomi changes from SAN to ZAN). Note how the first kanji of the entry below is presented in bold face – indicating that this is a word you now know.
| COMMON WORDS AND COMPOUNDS | ||
| 山 | mountain | yama やま |
| 一山 | one + mountain = a pile of something | hito·yama ひと.やま |
| 高山 | tall + mountain = alpine | KŌ·ZAN コウ.ザン |
| 火山 | fire + mountain = volcano | KA·ZAN 力.ザン |
| 山村 | mountain + village = mountain village | SAN·SON サン.ソン |
Each entry concludes with a sample sentence featuring the character under discussion; any unfamiliar kanji in these sentences are introduced later in the book.
| SAMPLE SENTENCE: | ||||
| 山 | に | 木 | が | ありません。 |
| yama | ni | ki | ga | arimasen. |
| mountain | tree | are not | ||
| = There are no trees on the mountain. |
KANJI #2
| 人 | PERSON |
Meaning
Person/Human being. Another visually simple kanji for which no story is required. When appearing at the end of country names, this kanji denotes an individual’s nationality.
Common Pronunciations
Common ON reading: JIN (ジン); NIN (ニン)
Common kun reading: hito (ひと)
As mentioned in