How can you discover the meaning of a totally unknown Kanji?

17 comments

1. Use browser extensions like rikaikun or yomichan. They’re invaluable for this exact thing. They have many dictionary databases so when you hover over Japanese text with these on they’ll bring up a little box giving you the reading and a dictionary excerpt of what it means. This works for more than just kanji so hover over everything!

   Edit: sorry I skimmed over this and misread the part about you mentioning this in regards to books. I’m not sure specifically how you can do this for books I’m afraid. Maybe someone else can give some insight. No doubt there are some resources. I believe you can do something with ereaders and tools like mentioned above

2. I’m no expert, but you search it by radicals on sites that allow you to do so (like jisho.org, I use that mainly, on the left of the search bar, at least on desktop, there’s “radicals”. The “app” sucks though if you do radical search, but there are surely alternatives if you just type “search kanji by radicals”).

   You have to get the gist of the radicals, at first it will be slow of course. You can help yourself by counting the strokes (maybe you recognize some radicals but not all, and search for kanjis with the total stroke count you think is right), but you have to have a general idea of how the kanji are drawn (typical order and type of strokes. I learned them with time. I used JA Sensei but surely there are 1000 alternatives).

   To me is just practice, compared to some months ago I am a lot more at my ease now, even if I’m still at a relative beginner level

3. Use a dictionary, duh. There are methods to look up a kanji in them.

4. If it’s a book, I grab my phone and use Google Translate’s camera input function to scan in the page.

5. Use google translate’s handwriting function! It’s very easy to find, even if your stroke order is a bit off. Once you’ve got the right kanji, you can copy-paste is into [jisho.org](https://jisho.org/whatever) or an equivalent. I do this and I only every have issues when 1) it’s so unclear that I can’t write it properly, or 2) (rarely) the font is so different that I can’t recognize the correct kanji

6. I think studying 形声文字 is very useful. Most kanji are composed of meaning-direct part and sound-directing part. The former let you GUESS the meaning of kanji while the latter let you GUESS the pronunciation (so you know what to google).

7. iPhone has shirabejisho app which allows you to just draw it out

8. I use handwriting input. It usually works very well.

9. You need to learn how to write / draw kanji. Each kanji can be formed from some basic part (basic kanji). When you get used to this, you can copy the kanji character even without knowing the meaning. And then draw on google translate to find it.

10. Mazii is a great app for your phone where you just draw the kanji. you can even draw multiple kanji! it will tell you the meaning right away. You can also writte a sentence on the app.

11. Google Translate; camera, or handwriting input.

12. I think the simplest way is to use a paper dictionary. In this way, you don’t need to learn how to input Kanji in an app. However, you need to learn how to look up Kanji in a dictionary. There are several methods, so you may want to compare dictionaries before buying one. [This is a great article](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/how-to-use-a-kanji-dictionary/) that explains the different methods and compares three dictionaries. I ended up buying “The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary”, and I’m very happy with it, also because when I bought “The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course” I found out that the two work well together. At the beginning of the dictionary, there is an exhaustive explanation of how to use it.

13. In Jisho.org you can enter the radicals off a menu (works really well) or draw the kanji (doesn’t always work as well)

14. Let’s say you don’t know the meaning of 日 you can use the translator camera function. If the result doesn’t seem reliable then you can try introducing that same character in google images. If the character is not usually used alone then most likely you will get the stroke order of the character. In which case the best option i think would be to search different words that include that character and their translations and then try to infer the meaning.

15. Either you look it up by its radicals or write it using a drawing keyboard.

    If you already have enough practice with them then you’ll guess its reading by some radical or the meaning itself again by the radicals.

    Maybe you’re asking this as a beginner In that case you need to study more to get to that point I mentioned above. Good luck with your studies! 🙂

16. http://kanji.wareya.moe/

    https://kanji.sljfaq.org/

    https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu.html

17. Look it up by radical. Either in a physical dictionary or on a website.