Illiteracy isn't cool, kids.

As an English literature student, who spent many a time scrutinizing the subtle meanings and differences of various words, and relying on my understanding of my langauge to make sense of various opinions and arguments I wanted to make. Coming to Japan, one day sitting on the train, it suddenly dawned on me that I was virtually Illiterate!

I had gone from enjoying the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare to wondering what the heck those lines and squiggles might mean.

One of the things that helped increase my fascination in Japan was its poetry. Everybody will most likely have heard of 'Haiku' and perhaps 'Tanka', perhaps famous poets like 'Bassho' and perhaps 'Issa'. The more I read, and read about Japanese poetry, the more the language became interesting to me. I discovered that Japanese was a syllabic alphabet - using clear cut syllables such as 'ka', 'nu', 'to', 'shi' etc. etc. to spell and pronounce vocabulary. This fit well with the strict rhythmic structure (which is supposedly a bit more complicated than the simple 5, 7, 5 structure many might be familiar with for Haiku-style poems). And it became clear to me that Japanese was a pretty elliptical language, causing for (my favorite current useless word in Japanese at the moment) 閑寂枯淡 kanjakukotan - which apparently means : aesthetic sense in Japanese art emphasising quiet simplicity and subdued refinement. (how romantic and difficult to understand eh?!).

But then you delve a bit deeper in to the Japanese language and you begin to understand that it uses not one script like English does (ie. the latin alphabet) but FOUR. The latin alphabet (romaji) two Japanese-originated scripts (hiragana, katakana) and the dreaded Chinese characters (kanji). Over the many hundreds of years since these characters were introduced from China - they have evolved into very different forms. Everybody looks at Kanji.....and most people run for the hills upon first sight! There are over 6000 Chinese characters - but only about 2000 that are most commonly used (and part of a government created list which ensures newspapers and important documents/announcements use only those characters). Japanese 'kanji' are typically considered harder to get to grips with than Chinese 'kanji' because they usually have more than one way to say the same kanji. Most likely the thing that people first think when they embark upon Japanese study is.....where do I start....

From the age of 6 years old Japanese students begin their journey of about 9-12 years of tedious 'Kanji' study - repeatedly writing out the characters in the right stroke order, and remember the various ways to say each kanji. (Some kanji have up to about 12 readings!)

HOWEVER, don't think this is intended to put anyone off learning Japanese - quite on the contrary. I want to tell you that its possible - and that it is actually one of the most logical scripts I think I've seen!

Let me explain:

here is the character for light: 光 - (my apologies if your computer won't read Japanese...this post kind of relies on it for purposes of explanation)

the Japanese reading for 光 is 'hikari', but the Chinese reading for 光 is 'ko-'. If you find 光 on its own (without another kanji next to it) then you will undoubtedly use the Japanese reading, but if you see another kanji next to 光 for example 観光 (sightseeing) you will read the 光 part as 'ko-' (the word in Japanese is kanko-), this is the same for 栄光 (glory)、光栄 (honour)、月光 (moonlight) You will always use (kou-)!

Once you understand this key - you being to realise that Japanese is extremely flexible in terms of creating a plethora of words. And learning how to read Japanese becomes so much easier.

In other instances you just simply have to remember the different ways to say a particular kanji (just like in English, usually the most common words are the ones that have loads of exceptions or complications too!)

One of my favourites is 下 'shita' - the character for 'down'. With the kanji on its own you can read it two ways　shita, or shimo

Put it next to some Japanese and you can read it as: o, sa, ku

Put it next to some different kanji and you can read it as: ka, or ge

And in those instances you just have to remember when to use which reading! But it sounds more difficult than it is, there is always some kind of system...

So if you have the desire and determination to read Japanese, you two can do it. I once was one of those people who thought I would only be able to possibly remember 10 or so kanji. But it was particularly on my latest trip in Japan that I realised 'By eck, I can more or less read and understand all this Japanese around me!' and its so ace! What was once a restrcited land full of things I couldn't read or understand has now become a world of opportunity and satisfaction resulting in such expressions as 'Ah so THAT'S where the car park is' and 'oh it's open on THAT day' and 'Ahh I CAN'T drink this!' We often take our reading abilities so much for granted - we don't realise how much we can do being able to read and write and express ourselves!

The next stage after reading, is not just to recognise them when you see them, but to have them ingrained in your mind and be able to write them in the correct stroke order....but lets not jump more hurdles than we need to for now!!!