Saturday 7 February 2015

Cutting Corners With Kanji


漢字 · かんじ

Aule Kanji Pages · Kanji Recog Pages

What to do with old-style kanji flashcards that use roumaji instead of kana ?

Well, I cut their corners !

Taking off the lower-right corner of the card with one small snip means ON-yomi ONLY.

The loss of the upper-right corner means more than one sound comprises some one pronunciation.

The upper-left corner means more than one pronunciation.

If you use the lower-left for kokuji that may not give you many such cards, but they will be easy to find in any deck of cards.

I think the lower-left might be used with the right-side corners to flag cards that are for kanji with single but long sounds.  What do you think ?

Make a few cards with cardstock or poster board or bristol board and see what you think of a deck of 20 cards in your pocket.

For a history of such cards, see the early days of information storage in government and business !




Tuesday 3 February 2015

kanji tips on kana


漢字 · かんじ

Aule Kanji Pages · Kanji Recog Pages

Learning to pronounce Japanese kanji ?

You can forget about these kana for remembering the initial or first sounds of some 2,000 basic kanji :

きゃ -
きゅ -
きょ -
ざ - 
じ -  
ず -  
ぜ (1) 
ぞ -   
く -
し -
しゃ -
しゅ -  しゅう -
しょ -
じゃ - じゃ.れる  戯
じゅ -  じゅう  -  さんじゅう   世   じゅん.じる  準

じょ -  じょう -
そ - 
づ -
ば -
び -  
ぶ -  ぶた (1)  ぶる (1)  
べ -  べに  (1) 
ぼ -

シャ  予
ツ  -
へ -
ヌ  -
ら - 
り -  
れ - 
ろ -
りゅ -
りょ -
パ -
ピ -
プ -
ペ -
ポ - 
ピャ -
ピュ -
ピョ -
ヂ  -
ヅ  -

And you can all but forget about 

ヒャ -  ヒャク  百
ヒュ -

ミャ -  ミャク  脈
ミュ -


ヂャ -
ヂュ -  ヂュウ  住
ヂョ -

And many others have only one, two or three instances of kanji that begin with that sound.

Of course, if you are not distinguishing ON-yomi and kun-yomi, all bets are off ...

And as you might expect, many katakana are not relevant for kanji.