1 & 2 STROKE KANJI:
IN THE BEGINNING…

The only real valuable thing is intuition. – Albert Einstein

Up until now, you have been learning “fake” kanji. Radicals, the pieces that make up kanji, wish in all their hearts that they can become like their older brothers and sisters. Some of them do, some of them don’t (and we’ll learn all about that). By learning from the younger kids, though, you’ll know exactly how to take on the older ones, and soon, you’ll be sitting at the adult table in all your (kanji) family gatherings.

AN INTRO TO (REAL) KANJI

Welcome to the monster that is called “kanji.” You’ve gotten a great introduction to it (as long as you spent time learning the radicals. If not, go back and get to it). There are three aspects of kanji which makes it especially difficult to learn.

1. Each kanji often has multiple pronunciations depending on where / how it is used.
2. Kanji can be combined with other kanji to create words.
3. Kanji is difficult to read (and especially) write.

We’re going to take a pretty novel approach at tackling this problem. You’ve already completed the first step (i.e. learning the ABC’s of the kanji; the radicals), but the fun part is yet to come. First, though, you have to learn a little more about how kanji works within the Japanese language.

The first thing you need to learn a little bit about is the おん and くん readings.

おんよみ

おんよみ (おん readings) are the original Chinese readings. Since kanji came from China, a lot of the pronunciations came with it. Now, of course, the Japanese and Chinese languages have different pronunciations, but the おん reading is generally a close approximation of the original Chinese reading. They won’t always be exact (or close), so you can’t say you know how to speak any form of Chinese after learning kanji in Japanese, but you could definitely get part way there, I suppose.

One of the problems with this, though, is that multiple kanji were introduced to Japan multiple times (at different times in history), which means the meanings and pronunciations sometimes changed too. Because of this, many kanji have multiple おん readings. Although in most cases, this would just mean you have more to memorize, we’re going to use the 80-20 rule and just learn the pronunciations that will be right 80 or 90 percent of the time, because in general only one おん reading is used almost all of the time. You’ll learn the other less common pronunciations later.

おんよみ usually occurs in multi-kanji compound words (which are known as jukugo). Jukugo is generally more formal (though not always) and more intellectual (also not always) than the くん counterparts.

くんよみ

The くん reading comes from the pronunciation of native Japanese words which were associated with a kanji as it was being introduced. In Chinese, one kanji usually represented one syllable. Since this doesn’t work in Japanese, you’ll usually see that with a くんよみ kanji pronunciation there will be hiragana attached to the kanji to finish out the word. For example, the word “to eat” is as follows.

食べます　＝　たべます

The kanji portion is pronounced た but it doesn’t make any sense unless the hiragana portion is attached to it to make たべます (to eat). Not all kanji have hiragana attached to them, however. There are plenty of kanji with くん readings that stand up on their own. For example, the native Japanese pronunciation for the kanji 西 (west) is にし while the おん reading is すい or せい (which are modified one-syllable Chinese sounds).

When to use おん or くん readings

Knowing when to use each pronunciation is very difficult. There are some general rules that might help, though.

1. When a kanji is sitting on its own, often times you’ll use the くん reading (though there are a ton of exceptions to this).
2. A lot of the time, you’ll have to have prior knowledge of a particular word before you can know the pronunciation of it. Often times you can guess, but it’s not like English, which lets you phonetically figure out the pronunciation. With kanji, preparedness is key. Even native Japanese speakers can’t always figure out the pronunciation of a word if they haven’t learned it in context before.
3. There are always exceptions, and they show up all the time, so you might as well start learning these things now.

With that, let’s get started learning about how you’re going to learn kanji here on TextFugu. Like anything, if you want to get good at it, you’ll have to practice. Kanji is no different, and even though we’ll be going about it as efficiently as possible, it will definitely take some time to learn these.

TEXTFUGU KANJI METHODOLOGY

Here’s how TextFugu does things with kanji. The idea isn’t to go from simplest word meaning to most difficult word meaning. Kanji doesn’t work that way. Difficult words (in meaning) can have really simple kanji, and really easy words (in meaning) can have really difficult kanji. Unfortunately, if you learn that way, you will be learning very difficult kanji early on. The most important thing is to build kanji on top of each other, so the idea is that we’re going to start with simple kanji (in terms of how easy it is to read / write it) and work our way up.

Each kanji is broken up into several parts:

1. The kanji
2. The build of the kanji (i.e. how to put it together). This will be less important initially, but become more and more necessary as kanji get more complicated.
3. おん reading (not all kanji will have this)
4. Mnemonic device to help you remember the おん reading as well as how to write it. I’ll also help you really imagine and feel the stories as well. The more you introduce your senses into the equation, the better your memory will be of it.
5. くん reading (not all kanji will have this)
6. Common words that use this kanji, to help you learn both the おん and くん readings.
7. Link to a Smart.fm list that will help you learn these words, which will help you to learn various pronunciations of the kanji depending on how / where it is being used.

Through the first few kanji, you will be guided step-by-step. After a while, a lot of the guides will fall away, and you’ll be able to learn kanji in peace (and at a faster rate). Kanji will be introduced in groups, and TextFugu lessons will tell you when and what kanji you should learn as you’re going through them. The idea is consistency (and not bursts of study). If you learn 10-20 kanji a day, you could be at 1000 kanji 50 days, which is really really fast. Most people spend years learning that much kanji, not to mention various common words that go along with it!

The kanji that you’ll be learning is called 常用（じょうよう） kanji – this is the kanji you need to know in order to function in Japanese society (and read a newspaper). There are approximately 2000 kanji to be learned (that’s a lot, right!?) but we’ll make sure they build on each other pretty nicely, so it won’t be as hard as you think. Although there are many more kanji besides 常用 kanji, these are the most useful kanji and will get you the farthest. Sure, after you learn these there will be another 2000-3000 kanji you don’t know, but you don’t need them (right now). The first 2000 kanji will allow you to read 95% of what’s out there. Heck, even learning the first 1000 will get you 70-75% of the way.

Anyways, it’s time to get started. Just follow the detailed steps provided in these first few kanji and you’ll be okay. This is exciting (maybe more exciting for me than you)! It’s like your first steps as a baby.

YOUR FIRST KANJI

These are your first 14 kanji, which consist of the all the 1 and 2-stroke kanji in the 常用 list. These of course are the easiest (and simplest) kanji out there, which makes them a good introduction into kanji learning. You’ll notice that a lot of these are also the same as the radicals we learned in the radical chapters. There definitely will be a good amount of overlap in the early stages. But, since you know a lot of the below kanji, you can focus on the hard part: Remembering how to pronounce the suckers. Through practice (as well as some memory tricks) you’ll be learning kanji in no time.

Quickly, before you get started, here are some quick things to keep in mind:

1. Green is the pronunciation of the kanji (usually the おんよみ, though it can be the くんよみ if there is no おんよみ).
2. Purple is the meaning of the kanji.
3. Practice lists will be available for each kanji, which consists of the common words. You can use this to further solidify the various pronunciations (おん／くんよみ) as well as give you some useful words to learn.
4. “Build” will let you know how the kanji is built. Although in later chapters it will contain a “story” to help you remember how the particular kanji is built, in this chapter (for the most part) it will just tell you the single radical to use. Such simple kanji don’t need as much help here, but as it gets more complicated you’ll be relying on this more and more (otherwise learning the radicals would be useless!).

Let’s go!

That does it for the first chapter. Unfortunately, this was a pretty short one, but I suppose it was also an introduction. Things are going to start picking up, and actually, probably get a little easier. Coming up with mnemonic devices and such is actually more difficult for 1-2 stroke kanji. The more difficult the kanji, the more there is to work with.

So, you’ve finished your first 14 kanji. Congrats! It may not seem like a lot, but it will start building and building, and you’ll really pick up speed the farther along you get. Even though the kanji will get more complicated, you’ll get better at learning it. You can do it – just stick with it, learn the common vocab, insert your emotions and senses into the stories, and be consistent with your studies.

Before You Move on:

• Make sure you can identify and write the above kanji
• Learn the “Common words” associated with with the various kanji (Smart.fm List)
• Practice the Memory devices along with each kanji. They may seem silly, but the more things you connect in your brain, the easier it will be to find it later. Take the memory sentences seriously, as they’ll help out as your brain starts feeling flooded!
• Use this blank kanji sheet to practice the above kanji. The most important thing when practicing kanji writing is to NOT think of it as writing individual strokes. Think of it as writing chunks (i.e. radicals) and putting them together. It won’t be as necessary in this chapter, but in future chapters, as kanji gets more complicated, it will be really important for you to have practiced in this way.
• Optional: Learn more about 常用 kanji

Three Stroke Kanji →

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