There is one really specific thing about kanjis that confuses me a lot, and I never found any answer on the internet. If someone could explain me clearly it would help me so much in my learning.
My question is : if you want to say a certain word, how do you know if there is one precise kanji for it, or if you have to combine multiple kanjis to express it?
Oh, and in both cases, are there different options ? Like two kanjis meaning the same thing? Or multiple kanjis combinations leading to the same idea?
I’m just so lost. Please help me.
4 comments
You’re basically asking for Kanji to be explained in totality.
You can learn individual kanji by repetition, but how they are used is more a matter of experience. There can be multiple kanji or combinations of kanji that translates to a single word in English and often there is no logical rule to tell which is to be used for what context. If you try to derive some kind of pattern from this you will end up feeling lost
So, the easiest thing is just to think of it like spelling. Just like when you were in elementary school, you have to learn/memorize *this word is spelled with that kanji, that word is spelled with these two kanji*. Because of hiragana/katakana, it does mean that all words in Japanese have more than one way to spell them (in hiragana vs in kanji) but it’s the same concept.
And just like with English, part of learning how to spell all the words is to memorize what sounds all the letters make, both separately and together (o is for *OH*, and oo is for *OOOH*). It’s more complex than English, because it’s like learning an “alphabet” made of 5000 different letters and even though some of the letters make the same sound, you might spell one word using one particular letter and a different word (that sounds the same) using a different letter. Because even though both letters (kanji) make the same sound, only one is the correct “spelling” of the word.
So it really is just a (long, complex) process of 1. learn all the letters, and 2. learn what sounds they make.
you don’t
you have to know the word and use it. you cannot combine kanji to form words, and you never choose what pronunciation a letter has either, it’s not how you read or write
kanji are just letters. you can’t just combine letters in english to make up words (we’re not talking about coining new words here), and you also much of the time cannot look at a new word in english and guess what it means, either
just memorize words, and each one has a pronunciation, a spelling that might include kanji, a definition, and a usage