In the modern world, Eastern culture is very popular. The Japanese language is studied by people all over the world, or simply using Japanese characters and their meaning in various areas of life.

History of Japanese Writing

The origin of Japanese writing is directly related to the introduction of Chinese traditions into the life of the Japanese. While writing was already developed in China, there was not a single mention of a written version of the language in the history of the Land of the Rising Sun.

In the 6th century BC, China and Japan begin to build close diplomatic relations, as a result of which the Japanese begin to borrow the Chinese script and eventually adapt and modify it to the grammatical and phonetic features of Nihongo.

Structure of the Japanese language

In the modern language of Japan, there are three main leavings:

  • Kanji are hieroglyphs borrowed from Chinese;
  • Hiragana - syllabic alphabet of words and names for which there are no hieroglyphs;
  • Katakana is a syllabary used to write words borrowed from other languages.

Kanji and its readings

After the Chinese writing came to the territory of Japan, it was greatly modified and adapted to the peculiarities of local speech. The Japanese began to create new kanji or give different meanings to Chinese, which led to a significant difference between reading the same kanji. There are two main types of reading:

  • Onyomi (Chinese reading);
  • Kun'yomi (Japanese reading).

Onyomi is also called onyomi reading. It consists in the adaptation of hieroglyphs borrowed from the Chinese language. One kanji can have more than one onyomi.

Kun'yomi or kun reading is used to reproduce native Japanese words.

The same symbol can have one type of reading, or several at once. There are a number of kanji that, depending on the type of reading, completely change their meaning.

Using Japanese Characters

Japanese characters and their meaning in Russian are of great importance. Examples of their use:

  • tattoos;
  • mascots with kanji;
  • gifts (handmade cards, cups and t-shirts with kanji, etc.);
  • decoration of interior elements (wallpaper, pillows, curtains, etc.).

Japanese characters and mascots Omamori

In the culture of the Land of the Rising Sun, there are a large number of traditional talismans. Among them, a special role is played by a talisman called Omamori. Mamori means "protection" in Japanese. These amulets are made in the form of small bags of silk fabric of different colors and are stored in wallets, pockets, hung in a car, on a bag or mobile phone.

Inside the bag, you can put money or herbs, and so that the amulet does not lose its strength, after creating it, you cannot open the bag. Symbols are often sewn on the outside of the fabric, which are important for those to whom this amulet is intended. They are used to attract money, luck, love and so on.

Popular Japanese characters

Hieroglyph of money

The kanji for "money" is written as follows: 金. It is read as "kane" (kane). When used together with other symbols, it has many meanings:

  • Metal, gold;
  • Rich man;
  • Price;
  • Debt and so on.

Hieroglyph of love

Another popular character is 愛. In translation, it means "love" and is read as "ai" (ai). In combination with other hieroglyphs, it acquires the following meanings:

  • love or appreciate;
  • Sweet, lovely, beloved;
  • Passion;
  • Attachment;
  • Patriotism;
  • fan and so on.

Hieroglyph of happiness and good luck

The single kanji 幸 is used in nihongo to represent important words such as happiness and luck. This word is read as "ko" (ko). Meaning:

  • Happiness, luck, bliss;
  • Gifts of the forest or gifts of the sea;

Hieroglyph of health

Health is written as 健康 and reads like "kenko" (kenko). This word is made up of two separate kanji. The kanji 健 (ken) does not have a meaning of its own and is found in words such as "healthy", "a lot", "hardy" and so on.

Japanese names and their meanings

Female Japanese names

For women, names are often chosen that include kanji, meaning the character trait that parents would like to endow their daughter with. One of the most popular in this case is 美 (mi), which means "beauty". It is an integral part of such names as:

  • Akemi (meaning - bright beauty);
  • Kazumi (harmonious beauty);
  • Miho (beautiful bay);
  • Manami (the beauty of love);
  • Netsumi (summer beauty);
  • Harumi (beauty of spring) and so on.

There are many such kanji. A popular component in a female name is the character for love 愛, which reads "ai" or "ai". Kanji such as "mind", "calm", "wisdom" and so on are also used.

Often a symbol with the meaning of a plant forms the basis of a female name. Among them are the following kanji:

  • 桃 means "peach" and reads like "momo" (found in names like Mommo and Momoko);
  • The female name 菊 (Kiku) means "chrysanthemum";
  • The name 藤 (Fuji) means wisteria, and so on.

Male Japanese names

Reading male names is one of the most difficult parts of nihongo because it uses different readings. There is no single algorithm for pronouncing a man's name. Therefore, the correct pronunciation of the name should be clarified with its bearer.

The last and most famous aspect of Japanese writing is kanji. Kanji are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese. Most Japanese words are written in kanji, but the sounds are the same as in hiragana and katakana.

Stroke Order

From the very beginning of the study, pay attention to the correct order and direction of the lines in order to avoid bad habits. Often students don't see the point in stroke order if the result is the same. But they overlook the fact that there are thousands of characters and they are not always written as carefully as they look on print. The correct stroke order helps to recognize characters, even if you write quickly or by hand.

The simplest characters are called radicals, are often used as components of complex symbols. Once you learn the stroke order of the radicals and get used to the principle, you will find that it is not difficult to guess the correct order for most kanji.

Most often, strokes are applied from the upper left corner to the lower right. This means that horizontal strokes are usually drawn from left to right, while vertical strokes are drawn from top to bottom. In any case, when in doubt about stroke order, consult a kanji dictionary.

Kanji in the lexicon

There are just over 2,000 characters in modern Japanese, and memorizing each one individually doesn't work as well as hiragana.

An effective strategy for mastering kanji is learning with new words with more context. So to fix in memory, we associate a symbol with contextual information. Kanji are used to represent actual words, so focus on the words and vocabulary rather than the characters themselves.

You'll see how kanji work by learning a few common characters and the words in this paragraph.

Kanji readings

The first kanji we'll learn is 「人」 , the character for "person". This is a simple symbol of two strokes, each of which is applied from top to bottom. You may have noticed that the character from the font does not always look like the handwritten version below. This is another important reason to check stroke order.

Kanji in Japanese have one or more readings, which fall into two categories: kun'yomi(or kun, or kunnoe reading) and on'yomi(or is he, or onnoe reading). Kun'yomi is the Japanese reading of the character, while on'yomi is based on the original Chinese pronunciation.

Kun'yomi is mainly used for single character words. As an example, a word with the meaning "person":

人　【ひと】 - person

Kun'yomi is also used for native Japanese words, including most adjectives and verbs.

On'yomi is mostly used for words that come from Chinese, often with two or more kanji. For this reason, onyomi is often written in katakana. More examples will follow as you learn kanji. One very useful example of on'yomi is the addition of 「人」 to country names to describe nationality.

  • アメリカ人　【アメリカ・じん】 - American
  • フランス人　【ふらんす・じん】 - French

Although most characters do not have multiple kun'yomi or on'yomi, the most common kanji, like 「人」, have many readings. Here I will only give readings that apply to the words being studied. Learning readings without context in the form of words creates unnecessary confusion, so I do not recommend learning all the readings at once.

Now that we've got the general idea out of the way, let's learn a little more words and their accompanying kanji. The red dots on stroke order diagrams show where each stroke begins.

  1. 日本【に・ほん】 - Japan
  2. 本【ほん】 - book
  1. 高い 【たか・い】 - high; expensive
  2. 学校【がっ・こう】 - school
  3. 高校 【こう・こう】 - high school (third stage of education, equivalent to 10-12 grades in our country)
  1. 小さい 【ちい・さい】 - little
  2. 大きい 【おお・きい】 - large
  3. 小学校 【しょう・がっ・こう】 - elementary school (the first stage of education, corresponds to grades 1-6 with us)
  4. 中学校 【ちゅう・がっ・こう】 - secondary school (second stage of education, grade 7–9 with us)
  5. 大学 【だい・がく】 - college; university
  6. 小学生 【しょう・がく・せい】 - elementary school student
  7. 中学生 【ちゅう・がく・せい】 - high school student
  8. 大学生 【だい・がく・せい】 - student
  1. 国 【くに】 - country
  2. 中国 【ちゅう・ごく】 - China
  3. 中国人 【ちゅう・ごく・じん】 - Chinese
語 Meaning: language
On'yomi: ゴ

With only 14 characters, we've learned over 25 words - from China to schoolboy! Kanji is usually perceived as a major barrier to learning, but can easily be turned into a valuable tool if studied along with words.

Okurigana and changing readings

You may have noticed that some words end in hiragana, such as 「高い」 or 「大きい」 . Since these are adjectives, the accompanying hiragana, called okurigana, needed for various transformations without affecting the kanji. Remember exactly where the kanji ends and the hiragana begins. You don't have to write 「大きい」 like 「大い」 .

You may also notice that the kanji readings individually do not match the readings in some words. For example, 「学校」 reads 「がっこう」 instead of 「がくこう」 . Readings are often so transformed to facilitate pronunciation.

Ideally, check the reading of each new word for you. Fortunately, with the help of online and electronic dictionaries, finding new kanji is not difficult.
(English)

Kanji is often used to nuance or give a different flavor to the meaning of a word. For some words, it is important to use the correct kanji in the right situation. For example, the adjective 「あつい」 - "hot" - when describing the climate is written as 「暑い」 , and when it is a hot object or person - 「熱い」 .

In other cases, although kanji are used that are valid for all meanings of the chosen word, the author is free to choose characters with a narrow meaning, according to the style. The examples in this book generally use common and simple kanji. Details on using different kanji for the same word can be found in (eng.).

Modern Japanese writing consists of three main components: kanji - hieroglyphs of Chinese origin, and two syllabaries formed on the basis of the same hieroglyphs in Japan - hiragana and katakana. For example, the word "Aikido" in Japanese can be written in three different ways. With the help of kanji characters - 合気道. Or using the "hiragana" syllabary ー　あいきど . Another option is also possible - using the alphabet "katakana" - アイキド. In addition, when writing numerals, the Japanese often use Arabic numerals. Also, in the texts, Latin letters can be found when recording well-known international abbreviations (km - kilometers, TV - television). Less common in the texts is the so-called "romaji" - transliteration of Japanese in Latin letters.

Kanji - ( Japanese: 漢字) - literally - signs of the Han Dynasty. They are mainly used in writing when writing nouns, adjectives, verb stems and proper names of Japanese origin. Often one kanji has two or more readings. For example, the kanji sword (刀) - katana, in the word "tanto" (短刀) - a short sword is read - "that", and in the word "shinai" (竹刀) - a bamboo sword - "nai". The choice of reading kanji depends more on the combination with other kanji. Because of this, it is precisely the choice of the correct reading of hieroglyphs at the initial stage of learning that is not an easy task.

There are approximately 3,000 characters in the written language of modern Japan. At the moment, 2150 kanji is the required minimum, which is taught in schools.

For example, let's write "Daseikan dojo" using kanji characters:

蛇 勢 館 道 場

Or another example - "Aikido Yoshinkan":

合 気 道養 神 館

Hiragana (Japanese: 平仮名) is a syllabary. The so-called "women's letter". The name was fixed due to the fact that at the initial stage, hiragana was used mainly by women, who at that time did not have access to a good education. Hiragana conveys short vowels, their combinations with consonants, and the only consonant sound is "n" (ん). It is used in writing mainly to write words for which there are no kanji, such as particles and suffixes. In addition, it is used instead of kanji in cases where the writer or reader does not know the spelling of some hieroglyphs.

For example, consider the recording of the name of the Aikido Yoshinkan technique. Shomen Irimi Nage- shomen iriminage 正面 入りみ 投げ - "throw front entrance." Here is the word Shomen - 正面 - facade, front - is written only with kanji, and in the word Irimi - 入りみ - entrance and Nage 投げ - throw, kana are used りみ - "rimi" and げ - "ge", respectively. Another example: 合気道養神館の道場 - Aikido Yoshinkan no dojo - kana here の (but) indicates the genitive case, that is, it emphasizes that the dojo belongs to Aikido Yoshinkan - and the translation is: " dojo Aikido Yoshinkan".

Note the use of hiragana in case of ignorance of kanji characters with known phonetic sound. In this case, the already familiar phrase 蛇勢館道場 - Daseikan Dojo, we can write it in hiragana, it will turn out - だせいかんどじょ .

Hiragana.

Katakana (Japanese: 片仮名) - the second the syllabic alphabet of the Japanese language fully corresponds to the first one phonetically, but functionally performs other tasks. First of all, it is used to write words borrowed from other languages, foreign proper names, as well as technical and scientific terms. In addition, katakana can be used to make a semantic stress in a certain section of the text written in kanji and hiragana. Katakana symbols are significantly simplified and many resemble similar hiragana kana, but only one character "he" - (へ) completely matches.

Consider examples: Russia - Ro-Shi-A - ロ シア , or Irina - I-Ri-Na - イリナ , antenna from the English word "antenna" - A-N-TE-Na - アンテナ , or Pu-Ro-Ge-Ra- Mu - プログラム - from English "programme" - program.

Katakana.

Romaji - (Japanese: ローマ字) - literally - Latin characters (letters). First of all, these are abbreviations of foreign origin - USB (Universal Serial Bus - Universal Serial Bus), UN (United Nations - United Nations). Japanese names are written in Latin letters on documents so that foreigners can read them. Romaji greatly simplifies the work with a computer and other electronic equipment. Any keyboard can be switched to kana input mode using romaji.

Horizontal and vertical writing in Japanese. Until 1958, the Japanese language used the traditional Chinese way of writing 縦書き (たてがき - Tategaki) - literally - vertical writing, characters are written from top to bottom, columns from right to left. To this day, this option is used in newspapers and in fiction. In the computer industry, as well as in scientific and technical literature, the European way of writing characters 横書き (よこがき - Yokogaki) is used - literally - side letter characters are written from left to right, lines - from top to bottom. Officially adopted in 1959, this notation allows you to insert terms or phrases in European languages, chemical formulas and mathematical equations. You can, however, meet with a horizontal letter from right to left, this is not uncommon on all kinds of plates and signs.

An example of traditional vertical writing.

The same text in modern horizontal writing.

AYF (Aikido Yoshinkan Foundation Tokyo Japan) certificates issued by Yoshinkan Aikido Hombu Dojo (Headquarters) and certified instructors Aikido Yoshinkan, as a rule, are traditionally filled in a vertical manner.

Aikido Yoshinkan instructor certificate.

Tattoos in the form of Chinese and Japanese characters are very popular in European countries. The hieroglyphs of the tattoo carry originality and mysticism, since their meaning is practically unknown to anyone except the owner himself. But, despite this, under a seemingly simple symbol, a deep meaning and powerful energy can be hidden. In fact, only Europeans put Chinese and Japanese characters on their bodies, while the inhabitants of these Asian countries prefer English inscriptions, moreover, written with grammatical errors. Be that as it may, hieroglyphs are very difficult to translate.

Before choosing any sketch you like, take some time to find out the exact meaning of the symbols. Otherwise, you can get into an unpleasant situation, for example, the one that happened two years ago with a German teenager. Having paid 180 euros, the young man asked the tattoo artist to apply Chinese characters to him, meaning "love, respect, obey."

Having made a long-awaited tattoo, the guy went to rest in China. What was his surprise when Chinese waitresses in restaurants constantly paid attention to him. The young man decided to ask why his tattoo causes such an effect. Having learned the correct translation of his hieroglyphs, the young man was shocked. On his arm was the inscription "At the end of the day I become an ugly boy." Returning home, it turned out that the tattoo parlor was closed. The unlucky boy had to do laser tattoo removal for 1200 euros.

If you still decide to make hieroglyphs of a tattoo, find out their meaning in advance in authoritative reference books, or choose from the most popular and sought-after symbols.

The meaning of hieroglyphs

Chinese characters tattoo

Zi is the name of the traditional Chinese script used to write official documents in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Chinese settlements. The Chinese "alphabet" (let's call it so conditionally) contains 47,000 letters-symbols of zi. In order to improve the literacy of the population, the government passed a law to simplify the writing system. Many dashes, sticks and dots have disappeared from use.

The Chinese themselves say that it takes only 4,000 characters to speak and write Chinese fluently. Yes, hieroglyphs are really difficult both to write and to translate. However, there has already been a definite trend for tattoos. The most popular and sought after hieroglyphs of a tattoo are symbols meaning love, strength, family, luck, peace, fire. This does not mean that your choice is limited to these words. With the help of Chinese tattoos, you can express your positive or negative emotions, inspire yourself with encouraging words, or capture a pleasant moment in your memory.

Japanese characters tattoo


Japanese hieroglyphic tattoos, like Chinese ones, are popular almost everywhere, except for these countries themselves. Writing in Japan consists of three systems: kanji, katakana, and hiragana. Kanzi is the most common of the three. The characters from this system came from Chinese writing. However, Japanese characters are easier to write. In total, the alphabet has 50,000 characters, most of which belong to nouns. Katakana is used mainly for loanwords, internationalisms, and proper names. Hiragana is responsible for adjectives and other grammatical phenomena. Tattoos based on the symbols of this system are much less common than the previous two.


Many celebrities have chosen Japanese characters as tattoos. For example, Britney Spears chose a symbol that translates as "weird". However, in fact, the singer wanted to get a tattoo with the inscription "mystical". Melanie C, an ex-peppercorn, has never hidden her girlish strength. The phrase "Girl Power" was the band's motto. It was these words that Mel C tattooed on her shoulder. Pink expressed her happiness with a Japanese tattoo of the same name.

Would you like a tattoo like this?We look forward to your comments!

In today's article, we will take a closer look.

You will learn:

  • How hieroglyphs appeared in Japan
  • Why do hieroglyphs have “on” and “kun” readings
  • How many hieroglyphs do you need to know
  • Why the Japanese will not give up hieroglyphs
  • How to read the character "々"
  • What order of writing traits should be followed
  • And much more!

At the end of the article, you will find copybooks that will help you write some Japanese characters on your own.

Japanese characters and their meaning

For writing, the Japanese use special characters - hieroglyphs, which were borrowed from China. In Japan, the hieroglyphs are called so: “Letters (of the dynasty) of Han”, or “Chinese characters” 漢字 (kanji). It is believed that the system of Chinese characters appeared as early as the 16th century BC. The Japanese language until the 5th century AD. had no written form. This was due to the strong state fragmentation. Japan was a weak state, consisting of many principalities, each of which had its own power, its own dialect. But gradually strong rulers came to power, the unification of principalities began in the country, which led to the adoption of the culture and writing of the most powerful state at that time. It is not known exactly how Chinese writing ended up in Japan, but there is a widespread version that the first hieroglyphs were brought to the country by Buddhist monks. The adaptation of Chinese writing was not easy, because. Japanese language in grammar, vocabulary, phonetics has nothing to do with Chinese. Initially, kanji and Chinese Hanzi were no different from each other. But now there is a difference between them: some hieroglyphs were created in Japan itself - “national hieroglyphs” 国字 (kokuji), some have received a different meaning. And after the Second World War, the writing of many kanji was simplified.

Why do Japanese characters need multiple readings?

The Japanese borrowed from Chinese not only hieroglyphs, but also their readings. Having heard the original Chinese reading of a character, the Japanese tried to pronounce it in their own way. This is how the "Chinese" or "on" reading - 音読 (onemi) happened. For example, the Chinese word for water (水) - "shui", has become "sui" due to the peculiarities of the Japanese pronunciation. Some kanji have multiple onomi because they were borrowed from China several times: in different periods and from different areas. But when the Japanese wanted to use characters to write their own words, Chinese readings weren't enough. Therefore, it became necessary to translate the hieroglyphs into Japanese. Just as the English word "water" is translated as "みず, mizu", the Chinese word "水" was assigned the same meaning - "みず". This is how the “Japanese”, “kun” reading of the hieroglyph appeared - 訓読み, (kunyomi). Some kanji may have several kun at once, or may not have at all. Commonly used Japanese characters can have up to ten different readings. The choice of reading a character depends on many things: context, meaning, combination with other kanji, and even on the place in the sentence. Therefore, often the only sure way to determine where reading is one-on-one and where reading is kun is to learn specific constructions.

How many hieroglyphs are there?

It is almost impossible to answer the question about the total number of hieroglyphs, since their number is truly enormous. Judging by the dictionaries: from 50 to 85 thousand. However, in the computer field, font systems have been released containing encodings for 170-180 thousand characters! It includes all the ancient and modern ideograms ever used throughout the world. In ordinary texts, for example, newspapers or magazines, only a small part of the hieroglyphs is used - about 2500 characters. Of course, there are also rare hieroglyphs, mostly technical terms, rare names and surnames. There is a list approved by the Japanese government of "characters for everyday use" ("joyo-kanji"), which contains 2136 characters. It is this number of characters that a graduate of a Japanese school should remember and be able to write.

How to quickly memorize hieroglyphs?

Why won't the Japanese give up hieroglyphs?

Many learners of Japanese or Chinese often wonder: why does such an inconvenient writing system still exist? Hieroglyphs are classified as ideographic signs, in the outline of which at least a symbolic, but similarity with the depicted object is preserved. For example, the first Chinese characters are images of specific objects: 木 - "tree", 火 - "fire", etc. The relevance of hieroglyphs today is partly due to the fact that ideographic writing has some advantages over phonographic writing. With the help of the same ideograms, people speaking different languages ​​​​can communicate, because the ideogram conveys the meaning, and not the sound of the word. For example, when a Korean, Chinese, and Japanese see the character “犬”, they will read the character differently, but they will all understand that it is about a dog. Another advantage is the compactness of the letter, because one character stands for a whole word. But if the Chinese, for example, have no alternative to hieroglyphs, then the Japanese have syllabaries! Will the Japanese give up hieroglyphs in the near future? They won't refuse. Indeed, due to the huge number of homonyms in the Japanese language, the use of hieroglyphs becomes simply necessary. With the same sound, words, depending on their meaning, are written with different hieroglyphs. What can we say about the Japanese mentality, which implies loyalty to traditions and pride in its history. And thanks to the computer, the problem associated with the complex writing of hieroglyphs was resolved. Today, typing Japanese texts can be very fast.

Why is the symbol "々 »?

The character "々" is not a character. As we already know, any ideographic sign has at least one definite phonetic correspondence. The same icon is constantly changing its reading. This symbol is called the repetition sign, and it is needed in order to avoid repeated writing of hieroglyphs. For example, the word "people" consists of two hieroglyphs for "person" - "人人" (hitobito), but this word is written "人々" for simplicity. Although there is no grammatical plural form in Japanese, it can sometimes be formed by repeating kanji, as in our human example:

  • 人 hito - person; 人々 hitobito - people;
  • 山 pit - mountain; 山々 yamayama - mountains;

It also happens that some words change their meaning when doubled:

  • 時 currents - time; 時々 tokidoki - sometimes.

The character "々" has many names: the dancing mark 踊り字 (odoriji), the repetition mark 重ね字 (kasaneji), the noma-ten ノマ点 (due to its similarity to the katakana characters ノ and マ), and many others.

What is the order of writing strokes in hieroglyphs?

Along with Chinese, Japanese characters have a certain sequence of writing strokes. Proper stroke order helps ensure characters are recognizable, even if you write them quickly. The Japanese reduced this order to several rules, which, of course, have exceptions. The most important rule: hieroglyphs are written top to bottom and left to right. Here are some more ground rules:

1. Horizontal lines are written from left to right and are parallel;

2. Vertical lines are written from top to bottom;

3. If the hieroglyph has both vertical and horizontal lines, then the horizontal ones are written first;

4. The vertical crossing the hieroglyph or its element in the center is written last;

5. Horizontal lines passing through the sign are also written last;

6. First, a folding line to the left is written, then a folding line to the right;

With the right order of strokes, the hieroglyph turns out beautiful, and it is much easier to write it. All kanji must be the same size. In order for the hieroglyph to be balanced, it must strictly fit into a square of a given size. Now that you know what order of strokes you need to follow, try writing a few simple hieroglyphs that we have already met in this article:

人- person


山 - mountain


水- water


木-tree


火 - fire


I hope that from this article you have learned something new and interesting for yourself. As homework, write down the above several times. I think that everyone who is familiar with hieroglyphics has their favorite hieroglyph, one that they immediately remembered or liked. Do you have a favorite hieroglyph? Share in the comments about doing homework, I will also be glad to hear your impressions. Second part .

Want to learn more about hieroglyphs?

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