Kanji

I have much to say about the presidential race but that will wait until the weekend. For now, I'll restrict my post to my latest encounter in Japanese: kanji. Hiragana is the general syllabic alphabet, katakana is the syllabic alphabet for words of foreign origin, and kanji is the last frontier; it's the logographic (pictogram) alphabet.

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It occurred to me that with kanji now in the mix, that the level of difficulty is significantly higher. For the majority of English words, there is a one-to-one correlation between the object and the word and that is all you need to know.

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1. See moon and recall the word "moon".

2. See the word "moon" and recall a picture of the moon.

Many kanji represent more than one object and almost all have at least two pronunciations. That gives the following relationships:

1. See the moon and recall the word "つき".

2. See the moon and recall the kanji character "月".

3. See the word "つき" and recall a picture of the moon.

4. See the word "つき" and recall the kanji character "月".

5. See the kanji character "月" and recall the word "つき".

6. See the kanji character "月" and recall a picture of the moon.

7. See the kanji character "月" and recall "month".

8. See the kanji character "月" and recall the words "げつ" and "がつ".

9. Think of "month" and recall the kanji character "月".

10. Think of "month" and recall the words "げつ" and "がつ".

11. See the words "げつ" and "がつ" and recall the kanji character "月".

12. See the words "げつ" and "がつ" and recall the word "month".