In my last rant about all the ridiculousness it takes just to write a simple sentence in
Japanese, the list of complications kept growing and growing and growing, until we threw that
kanji bomb into the mix like a writing systems ninja. But I didn’t get into the stuff that
really takes Japanese kanji over the top, making them seriously awkward.
Don’t forget, don’t you dare forget, that Japan borrowed its characters from China.
That’s important, because it explains what happens next. When a Kanji came on the boat
across the sea, it brought its Chinese pronunciation along with it. But Chinese and Japanese are
two very different languages with two very different pronunciation systems. So each character
didn't get pronounced the way somebody from China would say it but the way somebody from
Japan would hear it. Here's how I imagine that history. "Well, hello! Who might you
be?" "Han." "Ok, Kan.” “No, HAN!" “Yes, Kan. Nice to meet you, Kan." And that is just
the tip of the Sapporo ice sculpture.
What makes this confusing cultural mismatch even better is that the acoustic exchange
happened a long time ago, so it’s the way characters from old China sounded to people
in old Japan.
And since, like I explained last time, most characters are a bad game of charades with
one part of the character telling you what the word "sounds like", the confusion coming
out of this phonological telephone game makes that vague "sounds like" hint even more vague
in Japanese.
The fancy term for this cultural mishmash of kanji pronunciation is the Sino-Japanese
reading. In Japanese, they call it the On'yomi! Literally "sound reading”, since you’re
reading the kanji with its Chinese sound. And, of course, there’s more than one way
to skin an on'yomi. There's go-on. That’s the classical Wu pronunciation of the characters
from the 5th century. Then came the kan'on, which are T’ang dynasty pronunciations starting
in the 7th century. Tou-on pronunciations made their way to Japan from later dynasties.
The final on'yomi is kan’you-on, outlier pronunciations and even mistakes that became
conventional and stuck around over the centuries. So, yeah, don’t be surprised when the on'yomi
for a kanji you’re learning is actually a bunch of different Sino-Japanese pronunciations.
This has amusing consequences. If you go to Zen ceremonies, they recite this passage in
Classical Chinese that's called the Heart Sutra. But this is Japan, and these are all
kanji. So how do you think the sutra gets pronounced? In Classical Chinese? No. In Standard
Chinese? No. In Japanese? No! It’s just chanted as a long string of on'yomi, basically
resulting in gibberish in both languages.
Kanji don’t just have on'yomi though. They also have Kun'yomi! Like I said before, Japanese
and Chinese are two very different languages, which means that all these on'yomi getting
borrowed century after century are basically foreign vocabulary words. But do you think
the native Japanese words just stepped aside and made room for all the shiny new Chinese
terms? No. The incoming kanji had to fit Japanese, too. So Japanese words got matched to Chinese
characters that seemed like a good fit at the time.
Here's the character for cart or vehicle. It has a few Sino-Japanese on'yomi, but the
basic one is "sha". But the Japanese already had a word for this: kuruma. So this character
can represent any of these pronunciations.
It wasn’t an exact science though. Just like you can have multiple Chinese pronunciations
for each kanji, why not have multiple Japanese meaning readings, too?
There’s even one more bunch of readings to add to this list. Nanori! It’s for proper
names and is usually yet another native Japanese pronunciation for the character.
And the excitement doesn’t stop here, tomodachi!
Because it’s time to forget the reading fun and think about all the writing fun you
can have with these. That is where you really get to play with this systems within systems
madness... I mean, uh, amazingness!... that is the kanji.
If you want to play fast and loose with the history and meaning of the characters, you
can switch in some Ateji! Those are kanji characters used just for the way they sound.
When you see "sushi" written this way, that’s some improv ateji stuff going on. Neither
of those characters has anything to do with the meaning of that word.
Sometimes Japan just builds its own characters following the logic of Chinese character composition.
Just makes characters up. Because you can be productive with this charades game. These
are called Kokuji! Country characters.
Sometimes there are newer ways and older ways of writing the exact same character.
Shinjitai! Kyuujitai!
Sometimes a character gets way too complicated or you’re just feeling creative and you
need to abbreviate it in one way or another. And by abbreviate, I mean turn it into a completely
unrecognizable thing that I’ll sit there trying to look up, like WHAT IS THAT? IT WASN’T
ON MY OFFICIAL KANJI LIST! Ryakuji!
And mastering one character is only a fraction of the battle. Often characters don’t mean
what you think they mean, or they really don’t mean much on their own. Japanese loves to
combine characters to make a word. You go, Japan! Stack those characters! And then, once
you’re comfortable with multi-kanji words, level up again to tackle those terse little
three-character or four-character proverbs that pack some deep meaning
in just a very few syllables.
("Yame!")
This not even where things get out of hand. I promise you. You see, it’s not the quirky
syllables from last time. It’s not the quagmire that you get into when you start memorizing
all the kanji with their sound readings, their meaning readings, their substitutions and
abbreviations. It’s the untamed beast that only rears its head when you first put ink
to that fresh sheet of Japanese paper. Which looks a lot like regular paper. Uh, stop and
think about how super intricate the characters get with all their little lines and strokes
and da--... while I tell you in all seriousness that there’s officially a right way and
a wrong way to write each and every single mark in these things.
You made it this far, but I need you next time to help me through this. Stick around
and subscribe for language.