kanji

kanji (literally “chinese characters) are one of the four writing systems used in modern j-panese. the other three (hiragana, katakana, and romaji) are phonetic alphabets, like the ones used in english, italian, spanish greek, arabic, etc. kanji, on the other hand, are not phonetic, but convey a meaning, and can often be pr-nounced in several different ways. the kanji meaning “down” or “below” has about 10 pr-nunciations. ::eek:: most kanji, however, have about 2 or 3 pr-nunciations. kanji are very useful, considering how many h-m-phones there are in j-panese. kanji allow the reader to distinguish between two words that have identical pr-nunciations and completely different meanings (e.g. “koukou” can mean “high school” or “s-xual intercourse.” they have the same pr-nunciation, but are written with different kanji.) about 2,000 kanji are used in everyday j-panese, and yes, they are a h-ssle to memorize, but there are certain patterns (called radicals) that appear in dozens of kanji, which makes memorization easier. (e.g. the figure that looks “like three horizontal lines on top of a square” is seen in numerous kanji, most of which have meanings that are related to speaking or reading.)
kanji are coooooool.

they should offer j-panese in more high schools.
a writing system imported from china several centuries ago and still in use today in j-pan. unlike katakana and hiragana, each pictogram does not represent a syllable, but meaning. two or more kanji can be placed together to form compound words. you can also combine with hiragana.

books aimed at a younger audience will often have furigana giving the pr-nunciation for kanji and its compounds.
“i don’t know how to pr-nounce this word because it’s written in kanji!”
it is, and means, the chinese characters. this conceptual writing system is believed to be totally archaic by the european linguistic experts who don’t have a single idea about the whole thing. their logic goes as follows, from the most primitive to their latin:
pictures – hieroglyphs – kanji – syllabary (on the cyprus island) – greek – latin.
which is a complete nonsense, to say at least. i will try to explain why kanji is the best script for certain asian countries and why it should come to our general knowledge as well.
when a language contains a lot of h-m-phones, which is seen on a regular basis in j-panese and chinese, putting it simply phonetically will not do for more complex texts. so the text is much more clear with the glyphs. it shall also be taken into consideration that different scripts are optimised for different audiences. unlike latin, which was developed for general public and needed to express tongue-twisting sounds, and is therefore good for fast learning (some children learn it in 1 week), the kanji is targetted to well-educated and subsequently wise people. it is also proved that when one masters kanji, he can absorb information 2 times faster than when reading roman letters. but there’s more: unlike latin letters, one can see interesting coherences in the kanji’s radicals, which allow an experienced reader to understand a new character without exactly remembering it, and, what’s more interesting, enrich their mind with understanding how a difficult word can be made of the simpler ones.
now one piece of information related strictly to the j-panese use of kanji: they use both traditional and simplified variants of it, which may complicate simultaneous learning of chinese and j-panese. they also include okurigana suffixes after the word roots to express the tense.
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one of the four (if you include romaji) j-panese alphabets. kanji is the most commonly used alphabet but also contains the most characters.
1) kanji is one of the 4 j-paense alphabets.
2) i wish i understood more kanji