Kanji. Japanese language’s fourth alphabet. The most intimidating of all – a baffling arrangement of figures wherein one shape may make two, or three or four, distinct sounds. Purely overwhelming in number. That unconquerable beast we have read about in the lore, seen in foreign picture books – a dragon against which we must train for years, on simpler beasts, before we’ve a chance of tackling it and learning Japanese to any successful degree.
Stop studying in fear. Let me help.
Do you remember those charts your teachers gave you, back when you were learning hiragana and katakana? Mnemonic charts, I think they were called.
For anyone drawing a blank, there are a series of pictures that take something like the hiragana letter く (ku).
What I’d like to know is, why did these extraordinarily helpful devices—however inane and sometimes not-so-intuitive—have to stop at ん (nn)?
Kanji is exponentially more difficult to master than are its linguistic precursors: because there are exponentially more strokes, more ways to read them, more of them, and the regularity of their appearance in every day life, necessary for purposes of memorization, is nil.
And so, I bring you 漢字-gations, or Kanjigations.
Here, I will endeavor to represent kanji in memorable ways, providing multiple readings, compounds, and mnemonics in the form of pictures and phrases. My hope is that the conjugation of them all (and I mean that in the scientific sense—to link, connect) will make these letters hard to forget. I apologize to anyone who has not yet grasped the preceding alphabets, but the readings will be provided in kana only, assuming that those who enter here have dealt with it already.
Following what I’ve found to be the most useful language-learning tip—keep it fun!—even though it may be more natural to start basic, I’m going to begin Kanjigations by introducing two of my favorite (and rather simple) letters.
The two above kanji form a natural pair, and so we shall tackle them together. I love these characters because, firstly, they look more like Tetris pieces than kanji; second, their shapes represent their meaning and are thusly very easy to remember; and lastly, they are a complementary compound, by which I mean they appear to have been made for each other—the puzzle-piece compatibility is undeniable—and are, indeed, linguistically harmonious. Here are the vitals:
While these two characters are memorable enough on their own, as promised, here come the mnemonics:
Two tater tots, one of which is decollating the other.
(**Note: For the purpose of precision and personal enjoyment, some of the English vocabulary featured in these segments, e.g. decollating: to behead, may not be the most commonplace; in such instances, definitions will be provided.)
There you have the readings for 凸 and 凹 when found in a compound.
Now for 凹’s verb forms, in the form of a comic: the best way to depict verb-ing.
The Action of 凹 (くぼむ ・ へこむ)
A sad story, and hopefully one you will remember. Language learning principles preach that language is better internalized once the target word and its meaning are united in physical movement; so, rather than depress or be depressed, let the sketches substitute for the uneven ground of 凸 and 凹. And refer to the review chart below to remember that kanji and their readings are more than just shapes and sounds.