Kanji: Origins and how to learn them
9 mins read
Table of contents:
History
The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese-born script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions carved on oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (1250–1050 BC). They’d take turtle shells or animal bones and burn them to ask questions to their gods. Over 150,000 fragments have been found.
When those were burned, they formed cracks that were analyzed and compared to real life elements, then copying them down (or effectively writing), to create the writing system, which was engraved in non-burned shells to “send a message back to gods”. This writing system was called oracle-bone script (also known as tortoise-shell script).
This writing system was a logographic/ideographic system, but also used rebus (sound writing). The writing system was then composed of two distinct parts in their characters, semantic and phonetic. The radical/determinative (meaning part) and the phonetic part (that represented the sound).
Table of contents:
History
The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese-born script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions carved on oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (1250–1050 BC). They’d take turtle shells or animal bones and burn them to ask questions to their gods. Over 150,000 fragments have been found.
When those were burned, they formed cracks that were analyzed and compared to real life elements, then copying them down (or effectively writing), to create the writing system, which was engraved in non-burned shells to “send a message back to gods”. This writing system was called oracle-bone script (also known as tortoise-shell script).
This writing system was a logographic/ideographic system, but also used rebus (sound writing). The writing system was then composed of two distinct parts in their characters, semantic and phonetic. The radical/determinative (meaning part) and the phonetic part (that represented the sound).
Development
Those characters went through various simplifications and changes, such as writings in bronze inscriptions. Although various scripts were parallel to the oracle-bone script (such as the Proto-clerical, Clerical, Clerical cursive and Neo-clerical), the mainstream script evolved in a slow, unbroken fashion, until assuming the form that is now known as seal script.
Seal script became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qin dynasty (leading to a misconception that it was invented at that time), and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty period.
By the late Eastern Han period, an early form of semi-cursive script appeared, developing out of a cursively written form of neo-clerical script and simple cursive.
Then, the Regular script was born, during the period at the end of the Han dynasty (around 189–220 AD). This new script, which is the dominant modern Chinese script, developed out of a neatly written form of early semi-cursive, with addition of the pause technique to end horizontal strokes, plus heavy tails on strokes which are written to the downward-right diagonal.
Meanwhile, modern cursive script slowly emerged from the clerical cursive script during the Cao Wei to Jin period, under the influence of both semi-cursive and the newly emerged regular script, which was then formalized.
Characters simplification
China’s character simplification predates the republic’s formation in 1949, while japan’s simplification, namely 新字体 (shinjitai) are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Shinjitai were created by reducing the number of strokes in kyūjitai (“old character form”), unsimplified kanji usually the same as Traditional Chinese characters. This simplification was achieved through a process similar to that of simplified Chinese, of either replacing the phonetic component with another of the same sound with fewer strokes, or replacing a complex component of a character with a simpler one. Note that the modern chinese characters now differ from the japanese characters.
All of these characters have a specific stroke order, that helps making it easier to write them (and prettier when you follow them), and allowing you to search for them on dictionaries and digital dictionaries, in which you can draw the kanji (most of the times only being recognized if you use the right stroke order).
Coming to Japan
Kanji came to Japan probably via the Korean Peninsula. At this point in history, Japan didn’t have its own writing system, and although it’s not known exactly when Japan started using the Chinese script, it was probably Chinese immigrants who first started using it and then it caught on from there. Sometime around 500 AD we know that groups called Fuhito were formed to read Classical Chinese, which probably means it started getting wider acceptance around that time.
Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with Chinese characters, while native Japanese words could also be written using the characters for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Most kanji have both the native (often multi-syllabic) Japanese pronunciation, known as kun’yomi, and the (often mono-syllabic) Chinese-based pronunciation, known as on’yomi (note that the Chinese-based pronunciation is from the ancient chinese, not modern chinese). Because Chinese words have been borrowed from varying dialects at different times, a single character may have several on’yomi in Japanese. Note that there is also a “nanori” reading which is used for proper names.
Written Japanese also includes a pair of syllabaries known as kana, derived by simplifying Chinese characters selected to represent syllables of Japanese. The syllabaries differ because they sometimes selected different characters for a syllable, and because they used different strategies to reduce these characters for easy writing: the angular katakana were obtained by selecting a part of each character, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of whole characters. Modern Japanese writing uses a composite system, using kanji for word stems, hiragana for inflectional endings (okurigana), kanji readings (furigana) and grammatical words, and katakana to transcribe non-Chinese loanwords as well as serve as a method to emphasize native words (similar to how italics are used in Latin-script languages).
How to study kanji
Even if you don’t need to learn kanji in order to speak Japanese fluently, it’s important to learn kanji for several reasons, such as being able to read any material in the language, and using the kanji as “walking sticks” to learn new vocabulary.
Learning kanji has a giant list of methods that are recommended by a lot of different people, and everyone is always trying to say that their method is the best method, but the reality is that a “best method” doesn’t really exist, some will only save you time, and be more or less difficult. Actually studying, with any method, makes you learn more than wasting time searching for “the best method”. But what does learning kanji actually mean?
- Learn the meanings;
- Learn all the readings;
- Learn the stroke order;
- Learn how to write it (although, if you know the stroke order you are probably able to write them down).
Learning kanji usually revolves around drilling and rote memorization, and real-life interaction. Different approaches are used in order for you to learn the kanjis, we’ll discuss some:
In Context learning
Context-based learning (CBL), refers to the use of examples in teaching environments in order to learn through the practical experience with a subject rather than just its mere theoretical parts. Applied to kanji, this means learning the kanji readings using the words that use them, but not always learning the meanings or stroke orders of individual kanjis. Methods that use the In Context learning are usually traditional textbooks.
Out of Context learning
Out of Context learning generally refers to methods in which you’ll learn all the meanings, readings and stroke orders without using any interaction from their words usage.
Mixed approach
Taking the best from In Context learning and Out of Context learning, the mixed approach applies a different mindset to kanji learning.
This method consists of learning the kanji without the necessity to include any actual words alongside with them, but at the same time, not focusing on cramming to learn all the readings for every single kanji - which will be learned when studying vocabulary/grammar - but focusing instead on learning the meanings, radicals and stroke orders of the kanjis.
Some popular methods that use the mixed approach are Remember the Kanji (RTK), Kodansha’s kanji learner’s course (KKLC) and Wanikani.
My recommendation: The Kanji Triforce
The kanji learning triforce is composed of three tools: Remember the Kanji 1 from James Heisig (which contains 2200 kanjis sorted by difficulty), Kanji Koohii (which contains user stories for kanjis) and Anki (a SRS app).
Anki is the bread and butter of the method, because it addresses one of the best methods for learning in general, making usage of the forgetting curve (hypothesizes the decline of memory retention in time). Anki works with the usage of decks, that contains cards which contain the information that you want to memorize.
Remember the kanji will provide the list of kanjis, their keyword (meaning) and their respective stroke order, while also providing primitive names for the components of the kanji, helping you create stories, which are used as a resource for you to remember the kanji itself. The stories, meanings and stroke order should all be contained in the cards of your anki deck.
Kanji koohii is a website with a community that provides shared stories for all of RTK’s kanjis, so that you don’t need to make your own.
Links for all of these are in the “Resources” section. An Anki deck sorted by RTK 6th edition is also provided.