I have a question about kanji

[jeffreymgibson]

Hi There... I have been learning Japanese for about 6 months now. I've memorized the hiragana and katakana completely and lately I've been working on kanji and grammar. I also do the pimsleur audio courses for for speech along with some various iPhone apps and other vocabulary lists I find on the net. I'm making progress but it seems to be a long for the day when I can watch Japanese TV without subtitles or read a manga that hasn't been scanlated.

Anyway, like I said, I started working on kanji recently and I've gotten about 30 of them learned so far. But what I don't really understand is when you see two kanji and they make a new word that doesn't have anything to do with either of them. Are you suppose to go by the sound of the combined kanji or is their something else. Out of all the books and net articles I've read, not one single one explains where this new words come from.

The worst part about learning on my own is not having a teacher to ask these questions.

thank You,
Jeffrey Gibson

 

[Frankincense]

Morning Jeff.

I don't quite understand your question. =P Do you mean you don't know which reading to use when you see a multi-kanji compound word?

And could you provide some examples of those words you don't know how to read?

 

[Uninstall]

Hi Mr. Gibson,

I'm always learning as well but like Frank I'm not to sure about your question f(^_^;

Usually when you have a number of Kanji in a word they always relate to the character visually, a very very basic simple example I like to use “Tokyo“ (東京)

東　refers to “East“
京　refers to “Capital“

Thus you get “Tokyo“ once put those together in like a compound. Just a really simple example perhaps you already know ＼(^^)／

That's what I find so fabulous about the language but it gets tricky in pronounciation which perhaps in the future you'll struggle when it comes to names, or if you plan to do more in Japan, legal terms will attack you lol

Verstuurd via Tapatalk

 

[Animaksiat]

i believe you're talking about onyomi and it's relatives
try to read this first
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji

 

[jeffreymgibson]

Thanks for be willing to help so quick.

The example that Uninstall posted, I can use it. Now that I know what this kanji word means, I will probably always remember it, but if I were reading it for the 1st time, I probably wouldn't come up with Tokyo. I've been using the zkanji software as my kanji dictionary.

I guess what I really want to know it, are you expected to know all these kanji words the 1st time you ever see them, or do you learn them overtime from study. That's what I'm really asking.

Also, I've been trying to practice my reading by doing translating. Is it ok to post sentences here that I'm stuck on or don't understand for an explanation.

Thanks again,
Jeffrey

i believe you're talking about onyomi and it's relatives
try to read this first
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji

I've skimmed this article before, but I will give it a proper reading tonight. Thanks for the advice.

Jeffrey

 

[Haru-tan]

The words you are referring to are called kanji compound words. Any given kanji will have both an On-reading (Chinese reading) and a Kun-reading (Japanese reading). The former is almost always used in compound kanji words.

Let's try a quick example.

The most common On and Kun readings of "大" are "だい" and "おお" respectively (there are a few variations).

For the compound word "大家族" (Big family, だいかぞく - think Dangos!), the On-reading (だい) is used, whereas for the non-compound word "大きい" (Big, おおきい), the Kun-reading (おお) is used.

I hope this helps. :3

 

[jeffreymgibson]

It gives me more to study. The more I learn the more further away my goal seems to be. I have always thought that the on readings were the Chinese readings of the kanji at the time of import and they weren't used much.

Anyway, I have about 50 kanji under my belt now and a handful of compound words.

Thank You!