22 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
- Form/Reading combinations(
, keiseimoji) – These charac-
ters combine two kanji into a single character, with one of the two
indicating a root meaning, and the other indicating (at least one of)
the reading(s) for the character.
The last two classes are related to how the character is used:
- Derivatives (
, tenchuumoji) – These are characters with mean-
ings that are derivations or extensions of the character’s original mean-
ing. - Phonetic loans (
, kashamoji) – These are characters which
are used purely phonetically, ignoring their original meaning, or char-
acters that are consistently used ”wrongly”. This class includes those
kanji that had to be made up ”on the spot” in order to accommodate
words and concepts imported into Japanese from foreign languages
for which no pre-existing kanji form was available.
To make maĴers even more interesting, there are also characters which
fall in either the third or fourth category, but for which certain meanings
have become tied to certain readings. An example of this is the character
, which can mean ”music” when pronounced as ”on”, but mean ”enjoy-
ment” when pronounced as ”raku”.
Writing kanji follows relatively strict rules. Because kanji are mostly
composed of smaller kanji, there is a uniform way of writing that allows
people to remember kanji as combinations of simpler kanji, rather than as
combinations of strokes that only once finished, form a kanji. There are a
limited number of strokes that are used for drawing kanji:
straight strokes
stroke drawing order examples
left to right ,
㇀ starting at the lower right
called a ”tick mark”, starting upper left , , , , etc.
㇏乀 starting at the top ,
starting at the top
starting at the top
starting at the top, with a serif to the left at the end ,
㇁ starting upper left, and then pulling back at the end
㇂ starting at the top, with an upward serif at the end ,