NCTA

Japanese Audio Files

Kanji

Kanji originated from Chinese characters. Many kanji are exactly the same as the Chinese character; however, characters have changed or been simplified over time in both China and Japan, resulting in several differences between kanji and Chinese characters. In both writing systems, kanji are made up of basic characters or characters composed of radicals. Radicals are the components of a character. Sometimes the radicals look exactly like the basic character they represent (except smaller because all characters, be they composed of one or fifteen parts, occupy the same amount of space). However, radicals are often altered so that they better fit into a tighter space. The kanji for person, for example, is written as , while the radical for person is .

The pronunciation of Chinese characters has changed over time, but in China, at any given moment in time, there is only one sound for that character. Japanese, on the other hand, has several sounds for most kanji, including sounds that originated in China (called the ON pronunciation and usually written in capital letters when written in roumaji in study guides) and native Japanese words (called the kun pronunciation and written in lower case when represented in roumaji). Therefore, each kanji may make several different sounds.

Writing kanji in the correct stroke order is very important. Carefully examine the stroke order diagram for each character. In addition to the stroke order diagram, the following information is included about each character:

Click on any of the twenty-five basic kanji below to learn how to write and read each kanji.

Funded by the NCTA 2005 Initiative Grant