How does the Japanese writing system "Kanji" work?
From what I have researched, there are many, and I emphasize, many ways to say each kanji, but how do even THEY know how to say it? I would really enjoy learning their writing system, and already know Hiragana and Katakana, but can I get a little explanation of Kanji?
You are correct that each kanji has at least two or more completely different readings. All of these readings need to be learned, just like the kanji themselves. Not everyone knows all the readings of all the kanji. There are many proper names written in kanji that are pronounced one way in some cases and another way in others. Wikipedia has a fairly thorough explanation of it all:
Kanji is where they have a symbol for every word. They say everything the same, it’s just a different way of writing. Me and my friend are learning kanji together. there are about 2,000 everyday kanji symbols, but alltogether there are over ten thousand. You learn 80 kanji in 1st grade, 100 in 2, 180 in 3, 200 in 4, 200 in 5, and 220 in 6. In junior high you are supposed to learn somewhere near a thousand. When you are a child, you write mainly in the kanas, but when you grow up, you are supposed to write in mainly kanji. It is considered more sophisticated.
References :
kanji is for noun, adj and verb.
almost all noun have kanji writing. hiragana is just sound but each kanji has own meaning. and idiom (used more than 2 kanji characters) have very strong meaning. you cant change characters even if reading is same.
you need to memorize those idiom. (combination of kanji and reading)
and you need to memorize okurigana as well. okurigana is a conjugational ending in hiragana added to a kanji character.
only hiragana sentence is like misspelled english words in english.
really difficult to read. kanji has own meaning so we can easily understand the meaning of whole sentence.
ex
how does the japanese writing system ‘kanji’ work?
hau dus za japaniizu raiting sistemu ‘kanji’ waaku?
correct spelling is same as kanji in japanese.
misspelled words are same as only hiragana sentence in japanese.
References :
majored in japanese literature
You are correct that each kanji has at least two or more completely different readings. All of these readings need to be learned, just like the kanji themselves. Not everyone knows all the readings of all the kanji. There are many proper names written in kanji that are pronounced one way in some cases and another way in others. Wikipedia has a fairly thorough explanation of it all:
Once you know the kanjis, it’s not really that hard to know which pronnunciation to use.
Every kanji has an original (approximated Chinese) pronunciation and a Japanese pronnunciation.
As far as I know, for most of them, you’ll use one of them when the kanji is by itself (one-kanji word), and the other one when it’s besides another kanji. (Can’t remember which is which, though).
The problem is learning them all!
Oh, and, kanjis are usually formed from combining several other kanjis (they end up as “squashed” or little versions of the original one). Many kanjis that have the same “main” squashed kanji are usually pronounced the same.