can someone tell me if I have the basic idea of kanji understood?
So kana is just a literal syllabary. And that it’s purpose is to well, give kanji a way to be spoken.
Kana-> a kanji (水) is given a general meaning-> a new word can be formed by combining two or more kanji together to give it new reading but one that is still derived from its individual kanjis.
kanji have different reading (words) because multiple words are written with same kanji which is why kana has or can be apart of kanji, because it is a whole different word, just using the same kanji and modifying it with kana (so to speak).
To sum up, kanji a visual language.
(like emojis)?
That can be modified into news words by having kana be apart of the word( 食べる) or being part of a another kanji to make a new word(時間) and kana just gives us to give it multiple meanings or readings/ a way to voice the kanji because they are essentially small pictures or drawing.
But then I’m confused by the use of kana as whole words all together in sentences in general. Why don’t they get written with a kanji? Since no spaces and can be confused for particles?
I guess that it’s like English in that regard, you just have to know beforehand or have someone tell you.
So I this a good rough of how it works?
It’s a visual language kanji with kanji being actually vocabulary.
(and then someone thought it was a neat idea to categorize all the radicals into a basic system to try and make things easier to learn.)
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Start learning words and it’ll all make sense. You’ll only get confused by trying to understand it through abstract theory.
A long time ago in Japan, they had spoken language but no written language. Somebody brought Kanji from China as a way of writing the language, so they just attached the already existing Japanese words onto the new written system. Obviously, the kanji already had a Chinese pronunciation so in this birth the kanji have two ways of reading- the Japanese and Chinese way. Kana came later to simplify things, since Japanese had a lot of sounds for grammar purposes and where a kanji just didn’t make sense.
Kanji are essential because there are so many words with the same pronunciation. While English has many thousands of syllables, Japanese has only 46- so many, many words have the same pronunciation. Kanji helps the reader to instantly know which meaning they’re talking about. Sometimes words just get commonly written with kana rather than kanji because that’s just what people are used to.
Fun fact, your brain processes kanji differently than the phonetic alphabets- some people with brain injuries can read one but but not the other. As you get more experience with kanji you will find reading children’s books much more difficult because they only use kana. Hope this helps.
Kanji is a chinese writing system that Japanese uses, there are 2 main readings for each Kanji the Japanese reading and the chinese reading and each has their variants ie ku can become gu when its combined. or like kori is ice but kaki**gori** is shaved ice.
All Japanese can be written in Kana alone, but it would be kind of hard to read. But words like verbs, and adjectives always have a kana component that can change depending on the form of the verb or the helper verb/adjective that attaches to it. Nouns are often all kanji.
This is when it is very helpful to think in terms of the kana tables because they will shift from say the standard う row kana to their counter parts in say the あ row Kana for the ない helper adjective there are a few oddities but you’ll learn those as you learn more grammar.
Kanji kind of have meanings generally, but the system has been around so long that you won’t always get the results you expect. I personally think its better to just learn them as components of words and make connections when you notice them. People can show you some ones that have stayed close to there visuals but many are really just a combination of radicals. There are reasons they were combined in the way they were, but IMO that is not a great way to learn them because you don’t need to know the etymology of every word you learn.
many common words will be written in kana alone even though there are kanji that can be used for them, and that will depend on the author. Some words that are spelled the same with kana have different kanji and the different kanji will indicate which of the two words they mean.
I could be misunderstanding you but there’s some slightly weird terminology here:
“So kana is just a literal syllabary”
Yep exactly
“And that it’s purpose is to well, give kanji a way to be spoken”
Not really sure what you mean here. There are of course words written entirely in Kanji (you gave an example already). If you are asking if they are used to disambiguate between the various uses of a certain Kanji, then yes sort of. But it it evolved naturally over time so I don’t think “purpose” is quite correct. For instance there are still instances where the pronunciation is still ambiguous: 開く can be ひらく or あく, 行った can be いった or おかなった, etc. So it “fails” at the purpose if you want to see it that way.
“Kana-> a kanji (水) is given a general meaning-> a new word can be formed by combining two or more kanji together to give it new reading but one that is still derived from its individual kanjis.”
What do you you mean “kana -> a kanji”? At least historically speaking, the trust is closer to the reverse of that. Also there are certain instances where the pronunciation is totally unexpected, e.g. 梅雨＝つゆ but those are rare so don’t worry about it. (My point is just to communicate that this is a naturally-evolved language, don’t look too closely for a “purpose” in any of this)
“kanji have different reading (words) because multiple words are written with same kanji which is why kana has or can be apart of kanji, because it is a whole different word, just using the same kanji and modifying it with kana (so to speak).”
Just to clarify, a reading of a Kanji is not necessarily a word (although sometimes it is). It’s closer to a morpheme, if you are familiar with that that.
By the way, the term for kana which comes after the (usually kun-) reading of a kanji is “okurigana” (in case this helps with any further reading)
“But then I’m confused by the use of kana as whole words all together in sentences in general.”
Again because it evolved naturally, it’s not designed by a single individual. Japanese speakers started writing some words in kana only and now that’s the norm for those words.
“It’s a visual language kanji with kanji being actually vocabulary”
It’s ingredients for a vocabulary, not the vocabulary itself. Another thing that is important to understand is that spoken languages exists on their own, and each writing system does it’s best to represent it (never the other way around). Consider that every human born for the last 10,000 can speak a language, but many did that without ever knowing how to read or write that language.
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As others have said, a lot of this will become clear just as you learn. I tried not to emphasize that too much here because I actually do think it can be valuable, for certain learning styles, to have a framework of understanding in place first that you can attach all your learnings to. So I’m not going to suggest against these types of questions, but just be aware that may people have learned just fine without asking them
Oh also last thing, I am sure you know the meaning of “a part” since you used the word sensibly, but in writing it’s spelled “a part”. “Apart” is the opposite of together.