Kanji and kana
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
Kanji and kana · Page 10
Kanji Components and Why They Make Characters Stick
There are thousands of kanji and a few hundred parts they are built from, which is the fact that makes the whole system learnable.
5 min readCounting Kanji Strokes and Why It Still Matters
Stroke count matters less than it did and has not stopped mattering, which is an awkward amount of usefulness.
5 min readHow Often to Review Kanji So It Actually Sticks
Every kanji you learn adds a small permanent tax on every future review session, which is why the size of the deck matters more than the size of the day.
5 min readDo You Still Need to Write Kanji by Hand?
Almost nothing is handwritten any more, and handwriting is still the fastest way to stop confusing two characters.
5 min readThe Kanji You Actually Need to Live in Japan
The kanji that make daily life easier are not the ones in the textbook order, and there are fewer of them than you expect.
5 min readKanji Readings That Cannot Be Worked Out
Some Japanese words are written with kanji that have nothing to do with their meaning, and others with kanji whose readings apply only as a set.
5 min readDo You Really Need to Learn Kanji? An Honest Answer
Kanji is the part of Japanese most learners quietly avoid, and for some goals that avoidance costs nothing for months. For other goals it stops progress within weeks. This is the honest split.
17 min readOn and Kun Readings: Why One Kanji Has Many Sounds
A kanji is a meaning with several possible sounds attached, and choosing between them is not guesswork. There are clear patterns, and you can learn them from words rather than from reading lists.
16 min readHow Many Kanji Do You Need to Read Japanese?
There is no single number, and the honest answer depends entirely on what you want to read. This guide replaces the number with a set of goals and tells you which one to aim at first.
14 min readWhy Japanese Has Three Writing Systems
Three scripts in one line looks like an accident of history, and partly it is. It is also the mechanism that lets Japanese be read without spaces, and it is worth understanding early.
13 min readThe Japanese Alphabet: What It Actually Is
People search for the Japanese alphabet and find something better organised than they expected. Japanese writes syllables, not letters, and the chart they sit in is a grid you can learn in a week.
14 min readHow to Write Your Name in Japanese Katakana
Your name in katakana is not something you look up in a list, it is something you build. Learn the conversion habits once and you can write any name, including ones nobody has written before.
13 min readPractical guides
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