I can'ｔ read Kanji!

I remember that I saw the news of an event which people tell the spelling of an English word. Children and adults say the spelling of the word after the question. Does that mean you can say that spelling mistakes are just careless mistakes? How should I say....You can't tell the exact spelling by phonetics? How about reading? Could it happen that people can't read the word?

The Japanese language uses 4 types of characters, and Kanji is very hard to type. Since Kanji are ideographic characters there is no way to guess how to read them and there are also no rules about how to read them. We have to memorize each characters pronunciation. Kanji can also be read differently depending on the type (Onyomi, Kunyomi). My name Mari is written 真理 in Kanji but 真 is read in kunyomi as Ma, Makoto, Makotoni, while 真 is read in Onyomi as Shinri. So 真理 can read either Mari or Shinri, Mari is a female name, and Shinri is a noun which means truth. We must judge how to read, Mari or Shinri by context. The number of Joyo Kanji (Commonly used Kanji ) is 1,945, So we should know Onyomi and Kunyomi of 1945 Kanji. And like the sample of Mari, how to read them depends on the context.  Reading of a Kanji is changed by the combination with other Kanji: 真空[shinku], 真実[shinjitu], 真中[mannaka], 真心[magoroko], etc. In addition to Joyo Kanji, we use more less common kanji and the number of Kanji is said to be over 50,000...The story line is getting complicated. Basically what I wanted to say is I can't read all Kanji. And fortunately I am not the only one. "I don't know the meaning" will happen in any language, I wonder if "I don't know how to read" can happen in other languages/alphabets too, English, Russian, Arabic etc.

We have a Kanji Kentei (Kanji certification test.) The test has questions about how to read, how to write, idiomatic phrases, knowledge of opposite words etc. Me? No way I am very bad with Kanji/Japanese. I won't have to take such a test at any rate. Actually I hardly write by hand at all anymore. At my job, I use a PC 100% of the time. When I make a post card, I use a program. But that is contributing to us forgetting Kanji, (no need to remember anymore, what we should do is just convert fron the list of kanji) My writing is getting worse and worse. (yeah, It's embarrassing how my bad my handwriting is), so in a sense handwriting is appreciated here in Japan. Look at this , this is the "hand writing" typing program. You may register your unique handwriting by submitting a sample and then make a typing font close to your handwriting. Hmm I feel some contradiction with that idea.

By the way, this is a Japanese Kanji learning program "Yokozuna". If you have any interest in learning about such a complicated world. :-)

Comments

[aion kinah]

Interesting point: During English "spelling bees," people often ask for the origin of the word, if it comes from French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit... sometimes this will help us spell the word. This is called "etymology."

[Rhett]

Can one of you posibly help me find out how to write my(and others) names? I cant seam to figure it out.

[Debby Mendez]

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真理

[Renee]

I would love to learn to write Japanese. The only thing that I've learned to do that is close to that is writing shorthand which uses strokes to represent parts of a word, but that's still English. I would love to learn to speak and Japanese though.

[huang]

真理 means right principle or true logic !

G'Day Mate!!

I only speak Australian.

I like your blog :)))

[Adriano]

One big difference between English and other languages (like Italian) is that english does not have accent marks. In Italian, the accent is set according to simple rules, unless an accent mark changes it. is pope (emphasis on the first syllable, while is father (emphasis on the second syllable).

I am learning Japanese, and I have found that Japanese words are mostly unaccented, except that sometimes words are spoken faster than expected (especially numbers). Has anyone else noticed this?

[Mari]

Hi There
I am not good at nihongo. There are many good learning site. So let me know when you need it.

[Claytonain]

if people need kanji study resources, I linked to many of them at my site. The flash games are very fun and easy.

[Eleonora]

Italian is pretty simple about pronunciation, we say words as we write them. We generally follow the rules. Plus, voyels sound are the same as in Japanese so learning how to speak it it's pretty easy.

Example Pizza is ピッツァ and not ピザ, this last come from how English people say it.
Same for cappuccino カップッチーノ and not カプチーノ

Hello, first time posting here!
I'm from Milan, Italy. You have a great site, thanks for your views of Tokyo and Japan!

[Redruin]

Ok it's up. It got long really fast O_o.. If you are interested in reading my post about the way I'm learning kanji, then by all means be my guest!

[Redruin]

I am supposedly an "advanced" level Japanese student, but I only know around 800 kanji. However, I plan to know all the Joyo Kanji by this July. I think I have found (at least for me) the ultimate secret to learning kanji. I'm going to go write about this on redruin.com. Basically the book "Remembering the Kanji" by James W. Heisig is brilliant, I have really spent a lot of money testing out different methods etc. but this book, combined with certain other strategies, gave me really striking results (i.e. 99% accuracy with remembering the writing, stroke order, and meanings of 400 new kanji after only a couple weeks of intermittant study). I'll have the article up by tonight! I hope it will be very helpful. お楽しみに！

[TronDD]

Russian is pretty strict about pronounciation. There are times when a letter is pronounced differently but it usually follows a rule.

I think 真理さん should write more in Japanese, too. Since I read her blog every day, might as well get some 日本語 lessons, too.

[Jack]

Another interesting tidbit - in the UK we have spelling classes but I've never known there be a spelling bee over here.

[Jack]

There *is* a difference between to and too. "Too" is always accented, whereas "to" is never accented. At least that's the way it is in the UK. Sorry for the pedantry...

Reminds me of "hashi" in Japanese that can mean bridge or chopsticks depending on where the accent is.

[Jenn]

In English, you can't tell how to spell words by how they sound. Some words are easy (cat), but others are very tricky (know, psychology). There are a lot of words that sound exactly the same but are spelled differently. These are called homophones:

bare / bear
rain / reign / rein
to / too / two

Like your name, the spelling depends on the context.

English can be hard to read, too. Sometimes when I read a new word I don't know where the emphasis goes or how the vowels sound. One word I never know how to say is "raucous."

Interesting point: During English "spelling bees," people often ask for the origin of the word, if it comes from French, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit... sometimes this will help us spell the word. This is called "etymology."

[Marco]

Very interesting, as usual... :-)

I'm studying Japanese and I'm just training on the first KANJIs: NAKA (inside), UE (above), SHITA (below), and some other... I'll have my first Japanese examination after 15 lessons (30 hours), on 21 KANJIs, all KANAs and the first 5 lessons of NIHONGO SHOHO book.
KANJI are quite complex to learn and remember... but very nice to see and read in the middle of a text!

Uhm... why don't you write some part of you (very nice) blog using Japanese?! :-) Some simple things... even titles only.

Thank you again for you nice blog.