I understand that most kanji are Chinese characters. What I’m wondering about is whether the often-used kanji are also often-used in Chinese? For example, if I learned, say, the 250 most commonly used kanji, and then picked up a book on Chinese writing, introducing me to the 250 (or so) most commonly used characters in Chinese, would I recognize most from my knowledge of Japanese kanji?
Second question: w.r.t. Chinese characters, I understand that the vast majority of them are “phonetic compounds”, i.e. characters that contain a component indicating the meaning category combined with a component that is a pronunciation hint, for example by being a rhyme with the designated word. Such Chinese characters are clearly not ideograms or pictograms, for the character does not visually express the meaning. In books about kanji though, I find that many kanji are effectively explained (to my delight and satisfaction) as ideograms or pictograms. Howcome there is this difference? (I greatly prefer the Japanese explanations to the Chinese ones.)
2 comments
Interesting questions. I’ve noticed that over the years, it gets easier to “read” Chinese without being able to pronounce a single syllable, lol. With the lowball number of 250, yes, there should be quite a bit of overlap, such as numbers, family members, colours, time, etc. Some won’t be 100% the same (e.g. simplified characters 谁/誰, or different usage, think 我/私). Compound words of two or more syllables also remain fairly consistent in meaning between the two languages provided it’s ON-yomi – the false friend 手紙 (Jap “letter”, Chin “toilet paper”) comes to mind. In short, I’d say “yes BUT” to your question.
The second one – the approach of turning the kanji into pictures to have an easier time learning them has been around for a while (and works great). You could probably do that for Chinese characters as well, but simply put, it can be faster to just memorise the mechanics behind shifts in pronunciation when swapping certain elements. The basic premise of “ideogram+pronunciation”
does become more vague in both languages if more complex meaning is to be expressed. Alright, hope that helps….
You will find that even though the characters are the same but the meaning maybe slightly different, in Japanese (also Korean in similar context with hanja) Chinese were introduced into Japan from centuries ago and the Chinese language have moved on,(so has Japanese not the same direction) some meanings have change and more modern less formal word replacing the older more formal words with less relevance to modern society etc. But the kanji in Japanese(Korean) have stay relative stagnant. I find this even within Chinese dialects in China, in dialect word are spoken using the centuries old tongue. But having said that knowing Chinese makes life so much easy in Japan even without knowing Japanese. Basic navigation (restaurant kanpan) menu etc easily understood. Same with Japanese in China.