I'm learning Kanji -- Need help with this.

[GoldCoinLover]

"You're a nice person."

Above, in japanese hirgana:
あなた は すてきなひと です。

Now how do I write it in kanji?

I assume the kanji for watashi(わたし) is: 私

Person is: ひと, person is 人 in kanji? I don't know any of the other kanji.

Thanks

[Elizabeth]

素敵な is sutekina, but it isn't quite nice. More like great, wonderful or sexy.
Anata doesn't normally use kanji, with desu never, and even sutekina (like in a lot of anime) doesn't always. 　

[GoldCoinLover]

Ah I see. How would you say "nice" in japanese then?

And how would you say, "You're a nice person" in it?

[Elizabeth]

According to the dictionary, nice is shinsetsu、 親切な人です but more common is
ii hito (good person) いい人, politely 良い人。 There are also a variety of ways to say a person has a kind or pure (kirei na kokoro) heart or character, also implying nice of course....

[GoldCoinLover]

Ooo, a new kanji! 良い人

What does 良 mean??

[Elizabeth]

良い　is yoi, the slightly more elevated word for good.

[GoldCoinLover]

and what does 良 translate to into romajii?

[Elizabeth]

*Yo(i) or i(i) (or ryou if it is connected to other kanji.....)

*(i) is hiragana 良い

[GoldCoinLover]

Ok so,

良い = yoi

良 = good, pleasing.

良(yo) + (i)い = really good.


Now how would I say (including kanji) "You are a nice person?"

[Elizabeth]

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

Ok so,

良い = yoi

良 = good, pleasing.

良(yo) + (i)い = really good.


Now how would I say (including kanji) "You are a nice person?"

The i （い）　doesn't give it any added meaning of really good, though, 良い and いい　are both good, it's just that one is normally written in kanji + hiragana i and the other is only hiragana. Now for the application. How would you say "You're a nice person?" Try it yourself first.

[GoldCoinLover]

貴方 は 良い人 です。

Or...

あなた は 良い人 です。

[splice]

Sorry to say this, but you really, really should get a kanji dictionary or something. Or at least learn to look them up somewhere on the web. goo.ne.jp is good, but all japanese. Jeffrey's japanese at http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/dict will allow you to lookup japanese and english words plus kanji. Paste the kanji in the lookup box and find it (also works for compounds, like 本当 and so on). Or look it up using SKIP or a number of other ways.

The net can be a great tool to help you learn japanese, but I find it works better when you try and find things out on your own. Forums like this are also great, but I think asking for how a kanji reads or what kanji corresponds to romaji x is unnecessary, especially since there are many great tools to allow you to do that yourself. If you use mozilla, search for the "Moji" extension. Helps you lookup kanji, words, and has toolbar buttons you can use to get popups over japanese text about how the kanji reads and everything.

[GoldCoinLover]

I have plenty of kanji sites I go to. I was just asking how to write a sentence, and I gave two choices I thought were correct. Instead of getting I answer, I get someone saying to me" you need a kanji dictionary".

I have plenty of kanji sites I go to. I was just asking how to write a sentence, and I gave two choices I thought were correct. Instead of getting an answer, I get someone saying to me" you need a kanji dictionary". I happen to use the russel dictionary, real helpful. I was just asking which of the two sentences was correct...no one seems to want to help.

This is annoying, I wish it was possible to edit a post.

[Glenn]

It is possible to edit a post; just click the "edit" button.

I think the reason that splice said what he said is because you asked about how the kanji 良 is read, when that information would be readily available in any kanji dictionary or on any kanji website. To which sites do you go to look up kanji?

Edit: I think that you should learn about how kanji work in Japanese sentences. I'm not sure that kanji sites explain this, because I've never actually gone to one to learn. I used Hadamatski and Spahn's "Kanji and Kana" to learn about the Japanese writing system, in addition to what I learned in Japanese classes.

[GoldCoinLover]

Originally Posted by Glenn

It is possible to edit a post; just click the "edit" button.

I think the reason that splice said what he said is because you asked about how the kanji 良 is read, when that information would be readily available in any kanji dictionary or on any kanji website. To which sites do you go to look up kanji?

Edit: I think that you should learn about how kanji work in Japanese sentences. I'm not sure that kanji sites explain this, because I've never actually gone to one to learn. I used Hadamatski and Spahn's "Kanji and Kana" to learn about the Japanese writing system, in addition to what I learned in Japanese classes.

Is there a website I can go to that will let me insert the kanji for a meaning in english? And no, I don't know how they go together. Which is why I asked, no one really seems to want to help. If you know of a website where I can insert a kanji for a meaning, that'd be appreciated. I have a program where I can type the meaning in romajii, and it spits out the kanji.

[Glenn]

I don't know of any such program or site, sorry.

As for how kanji work *takes deep breath*...

There are two types of readings for kanji, on (音) and kun (訓). On readings (音読み or 音読) are transliterations of the old Chinese readings, while kun readings (訓読み or 訓読) are the native Japanese words. On readings are mostly used when kanji are written in combinations, like the word 勉強 (study); kun readings are used when kanji stand alone (most of the time), or when they are followed by okurigana (送り仮名), or hiragana that serve to inflect to show different grammatical functions. An example of kun reading would be the word 強い (strong).

First, let's deal with on readings. The first kanji of the aforementioned word 勉強, 勉 (exertion), has an on reading of ベン, and a kun reading of つと．める.* It also has the nanori (名乗り) readings (readings recognized for names) of ひこ and やつ. The second kanji, 強 (strong), has on readings キョウ and ゴウ, and kun readings つよ．い, つよ．まる, つよ．める, し.いる, and こわ.い, and nanori reading すね. Since these two kanji are used in combination, we use the on readings -- ベン and キョウ, which gives us the reading べんきょう for this word.**

Now let's look at kun readings. If a kanji has okurigana, or it stands alone (as was said before), it is generally read with its kun reading. For example, let's take the above kanji 強. If you see 強い, then you know to read it as つよい. An example of a stand-alone kanji word would be 音 (sound), which would be read with its kun reading, おと. Note that some words of this type, like 本 (book), are read with on readings (in this case ホン).

There are also what are called jukujikun (熟字訓), which indicate meaning only, and reading is ignored, and ateji (当て字), which indicate reading only, and meaning is ignored. One example of jukujikun is the word 大人, which character for character means "big, person," but the word means "adult." It is read as おとな, and ignores the readings (one would expect だいじん or だいにん). An example of ateji would be 寿司, which is read すし, and the kanji don't really mean anything; they are just there to represent sound. I think that the first type is more common, because the second type is probably being phased out, with such words just being written in kana.

Finally (I think), note that some kanji change meaning with reading. For example, the kanji 生 means "life" when read as セイ or ショウ, but if it is read なま, then it means "raw." Also, as seen in the above example, 強 has okurigana い, まる, and める, which all have different grammatical functions. The word 強い is an adjective, and means "strong." The word 強まる is an intransitive verb, and means "strengthen/get strong," and the word 強める is a transitive verb that means "strengthen/make strong."


*The little dots between the hiragana mark where the kanji reading stops and the okurigana reading starts. Also, readings given in katakana are on, and hiragana are kun. If the readings are given in romaji, then capital letters mean on, and lowercase mean kun.

**The first readings of a certain type are generally the most frequently used, so in the case of 強, キョウ is a more common reading that ゴウ. With this knowlege you can guess more accurately which reading to use.

[GoldCoinLover]

That's really confusing,

Thanks for the explaination!

I already had an idea of what "Kun" and "on" kanji were but I didn't know it was that complicated.

[Glenn]

With experience you get used to it. It also helps to have a good book that explains it in more detail and gives many, many more examples of what I have hinted about here.

[splice]

Originally Posted by GoldCoinLover

Is there a website I can go to that will let me insert the kanji for a meaning in english? And no, I don't know how they go together. Which is why I asked, no one really seems to want to help. If you know of a website where I can insert a kanji for a meaning, that'd be appreciated. I have a program where I can type the meaning in romajii, and it spits out the kanji.

If you read my message again, you'll see that I said:

"Jeffrey's japanese at http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/dict will allow you to lookup japanese and english words plus kanji. Paste the kanji in the lookup box and find it (also works for compounds, like 本当 and so on)."

I also said that http://goo.ne.jp is all japanese, but you can still give it a try. Paste a kanji in the search box, then press the button that reads "英和" (waei, japanese->english). You should get an english meaning out of it (and readings).

And again, Mozilla has a great tool you can install to lookup japanese words and kanji, and mark a page using the rikai site (then you can point to a kanji on the page with your mouse, and have the meaning come up).

All that seems to be exactly what you're looking for (did you read my message in full?). And I don't know about 'no one really seems to want to help', with all the help you've been getting. Plus, these things are usually learned in class, from a textbook or some japanese learning materials. Trying to learn this over a message board will surely lead to missing spots in your japanese. It's fine for questions about things you don't understand and need clarifications about, but here it seems you're trying to learn kanji from the ground up. That's textbook stuff, and I believe you'd be much better off getting this information in class or from a textbook, as it'll be more complete and actually integrated with the rest of your japanese learning.

But hey, that's just my opinion. To each his own.

I'm also curious as to where the edit button is located exactly. Can't find it anywhere on my message, and would've liked to edit this in:

Glenn, a bit ironic you're saying that you don't know sites to lookup a kanji meaning (unless I misunderstood what GoldCoinLover was asking), when I just noticed you list goo in your signature .

Wow. What the hell. A quick reply goes and does an edit on my message? That's so counter-intuitive... No wonder I had no idea where the edit button is... heh.

[Glenn]

Originally Posted by splice

Glenn, a bit ironic you're saying that you don't know sites to lookup a kanji meaning (unless I misunderstood what GoldCoinLover was asking), when I just noticed you list goo in your signature .

I was responding to the part about entering English meanings and getting kanji. Also, it seemed that he was asking about how kanji work, and not just how to look them up. By the way, I don't consider goo to be a kanji lookup site, but a dictionary. If you're trying to look up individual kanji it would be better to go to Jim Breen's online dictionary.

Edit: I just added that one too.