Kanji

Kanji 漢字 is the third Japanese writing system you’ll need to study. Kanji became widely used in Japan during the 6^th century CE, although it was originally imported from Chinasometime in the 1^st century CE. Although most kanji remain virtually identical to their original Chinese counterparts, the Japanese have changed the original pronunciations and sometimes even the original meanings over time.

There are a total of around 6000 kanji in use in Japanese, 2000 of which you need to know to read a typical newspaper. Kanji are pictographs (think Egyptian hieroglyphs) that represent words and frequently have more than one pronunciation. Japanese speakers learn the pronunciations and meanings of words through context and the combination of kanji characters.

Although you can (and Japanese children often do) write Japanese sentences completely in hiragana and katakana that are technically correct, it is considered a sign of being uneducated. Imagine a sentence in English littered with incorrectly spelled words and you get the idea. Now continue with that train of thought and turn in a resume for a job or an application for a scholarship rife with spelling and grammatical errors in English; it shows that you’re sloppy and perhaps not very intelligent. A resume or an application in Japan without frequent use of kanji is regarded in the same sense.

That said, Japanese people are more forgiving of non-native speakers who use kanji less frequently. However, they will be impressed by your level of fluency should you do use kanji. Plus, if you hope to read Japanese texts aimed at young adults or older, you’ll need to learn your kanji!