Can you tell me more about kanji?

[GoldCoinLover]

I have a few questions. I know what kanji are I think, characters used in japanse drived from china (actually chinese characters) which each one has a meaning.

However I don't understand why each one has 3 meanings, could someone explain this? How would I know which meaning from a next? How would I know which instances to write one? Why does "stroke order" matter? How are kanji classified? Do japanese people know more than 2,000? How long does it take to learn 2,000 kanji? A few more questions:
A kanji in example:
Let's look at this kanji. 鬮
According to JWPce:
Type: Kanji(uncommon, II)
JIS Code: 722D(F2AD)[r-]
shift-JIS E9AB
Unicode: 9B2E
Strokes: 26
Bushu: 191
Nelson:52736828
Halpern: 3-10-16
Spahn:8e18.1
Four corners: 7711.7
Morohashi: 45659X12.0663
PinYin: jiu
Korean: gu, gyu.
Meanings: lottery, lot, rafflle
On-yomi:
キュウ
Kun-yomi:
くじ



What does all this mean?
Thank you

[Mamoru-kun]

Hi GoldCoinLover, I can try to answer a small part of your questions:

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

Why does "stroke order" matter?

It matters in the same way it matters in our own writing: it's easier to write a caracter that way than this way. For japanese people it's the same, except that it's a little stronger rule (perhaps because they are complex pictograms than simple letters than the one we use ourself).

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

How are kanji classified?

By "keys", those small parts they are made with. You have keys above, to the right, to the left, inside,...and some exceptions too. Its good to know, but not really easy to use. When you are explained a kanji by a japanese, it's more easy for him to explain from which words it's comming from, than contructing it mentaly by its keys.

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

Do japanese people know more than 2,000?

And even more. I'm always surprised when my wife write specific kanjis for her lessons...But hey, there is no secret, she says it herself: without practice, they also forget lot of kanjis

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

How long does it take to learn 2,000 kanji?

Really...better not to ask

[dc_johnson45]

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

However I don't understand why each one has 3 meanings, could someone explain this?

Kanji came into Japan from China around 800 CE. (At least this seems to be the current consensus). You have two linguistic forces at work here; the use of Chinese characters to represent Japanese words (kun-yomi) and the import of Chinese words, also represented by Chinese characters (on-yomi). Since Chinese kanji have a one to one representation, and they are being used in two contexts, that's one way a single kanji can have multiple readings. Add into this the fact that the language developed over several hundred years without standardization and you would get this kind of diversity.

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

How would I know which meaning from a next? How would I know which instances to write one?

By 'meaning' are you refering to the reading (see above) or the actual meaning of the kanji? Some kanji, usually very common use ones, do have multiple meanings. 日 for example has the 'meanings' day, sun and Japan (日本, Sun, Origin, Land of the Rising Sun, harhar), but its more a question of knowing your vocabulary than knowing the meaning of the kanji when reading. I don't think you will have much luck trying to 'read' Japanese by understanding the meaning of the kanji.

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

Why does "stroke order" matter?

Its one way kanji are indexed, and it helps them to be written legibly. One look at Japanese calligraphy tells you its not a hard rule.

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

How are kanji classified? Do japanese people know more than 2,000? How long does it take to learn 2,000 kanji? A few more questions:
A kanji in example:
Let's look at this kanji. 鬮
According to JWPce:
Type: Kanji(uncommon, II)
JIS Code: 722D(F2AD)[r-]
shift-JIS E9AB
Unicode: 9B2E
Strokes: 26
Bushu: 191
Nelson:52736828
Halpern: 3-10-16
Spahn:8e18.1
Four corners: 7711.7
Morohashi: 45659X12.0663
PinYin: jiu
Korean: gu, gyu.
Meanings: lottery, lot, rafflle
On-yomi:
キュウ
Kun-yomi:
くじ



What does all this mean?
Thank you

Kanji are indexed in many ways. Since its such a complex system, having multiple ways of looking up a particular kanji is helpful. Knowing that you can always count strokes & get to a kanji that way is also nice Kanji are usually 'classified' by radical, a sub-component of a particular kanji. In the word 'ji', meaning 'time', 時, the component:日 is a radical, and its general sense of time (day, sun up & down) has meaning here. In addition there is the radical 寸 meaning 'measurement'. So, radical analysis can eventually get to the 'meaning' of a kanji, but just learning the most common kanji is a whole lot easier.

BTW, learning to look up kanji by radicals is handy, but learning how to tell the 'dominant' radical in a kanji can be difficult for beginners. Personally, now that I have a lot of practice under my belt I can usually zero right in on the dominant radical, but you will need to practice to get this kind of 'second nature' feel down. I recommend the Kanji Learners Dictionary, as it has a good radical lookup index and is not too large or expensive.

As for learning, several months to several years, depending on your time & method.

Yes, Japanese people 'know' more than 2,000, but there are some 2,000 kanji in 'daily use', such that knowing them you could read the paper, etc. This is assuming you know the kanji & its compounds (vocabulary).

Most of those items in the list are indexing schemes. Helpful depending on your dictionary.

[Mike Cash]

The best way to get a handle on when to use which reading/meaning for the kanji is to study them via structured material that also teach grammar and vocabulary at the same time. Textbooks are nice.

By the way, when did you move to Iraq?

[Mikawa Ossan]

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

However I don't understand why each one has 3 meanings, could someone explain this?
A few more questions:
A kanji in example:
Let's look at this kanji. 鬮
According to JWPce:
Type: Kanji(uncommon, II)
JIS Code: 722D(F2AD)[r-]
shift-JIS E9AB
Unicode: 9B2E
Strokes: 26
Bushu: 191
Nelson:52736828
Halpern: 3-10-16
Spahn:8e18.1
Four corners: 7711.7
Morohashi: 45659X12.0663
PinYin: jiu
Korean: gu, gyu.
Meanings: lottery, lot, rafflle
On-yomi:
キュウ
Kun-yomi:
くじ



What does all this mean?

I`ll add my 2 cents worth. Wow you picked an obscure kanji. I've only seen it once before, in a person's family name. Anyway, here we go. Kanji are classified in several ways. It's true that Japanese classify them using radicals as stated in an earlier reply, which is quite useful for looking them up in the dictionary and explaining what kanji you're talking about. However, there is another classification entirely different from that, although much less useful. This other classification was basically the government trying to reduce the number of number of kanji in practical use after WW2. It's more complicated than I'll say here, but to put simply, as it stands now there are 常用漢字(standard), 常用外漢字(non-standard)、and 人名用漢字(kanji for people's names).　(Help with the English translations would be nice!!) So let's go line by line!

Type: Kanji(uncommon, II)
Here "uncommon" most likely means "non-standard", and "II" is...I don't know. (I don't use an English-Kanji dictionary any more )

JIS Code: 722D(F2AD)[r-]
JIS stands for "Japanese Industrial Standards", and JIS Code is essentially the ASCII code for this kanji on computers. (Yes, this is technically wrong, but I think it's close enough for our purposes here.)

shift-JIS E9AB
This basically has the same meaning as the JIS Code, but using a slightly different standard.

Unicode: 9B2E
Once again, basically the same as the JIS Code using yet another different standard.

Strokes: 26
If you write this kanji using the correct stroke order, this is the number of strokes it will take to write it.

Bushu: 191
Bushu (部首) is the radical of this kanji, used in classification. 191 is apparently the number for たたかいがまえ(tatakai-gamae), the radical of this kanji.

Nelson:52736828
Halpern: 3-10-16
Spahn:8e18.1
Four corners: 7711.7
Morohashi: 45659X12.0663
I don't know X5

PinYin: jiu
This is the modern Chinese (as in, used in China) pronunciation on this kanji

Korean: gu, gyu.
The modern Korean pronunciation for this kanji.

Meanings: lottery, lot, rafflle
The meaning of this kanji. For this particular kanji, these "three meanings" are actually just different ways to say (in English) the same thing.

On-yomi:
キュウ
On-yomi is the borrowed "Chinese" reading of this kanji.

Kun-yomi:
くじ
Kun-yomi is the native Japanese word to which this kanji was assigned.

Sorry it got kind of long!

[dc_johnson45]

Originally Posted by Mikawa Ossan

Nelson:52736828
Halpern: 3-10-16
Spahn:8e18.1
Four corners: 7711.7
Morohashi: 45659X12.0663
I don't know X5

Actual entry number of this kanji in several dictionaries, I believe.

[Mikawa Ossan]

Oh, that makes sense! Thank you!