Kanji - those lovely Chinese characters adopted by the written Japanese. These are used alongside the much simpler Hiragana and Katakana.

I’ve always find it hard to learn Kanji mainly because of the amount of memorization you have to deal with. And when you’re  in the age of multi-tasking, schedules and memory gaps, it’s no walk in the park. Good for you if you have a photographic memory.  (ihetchu! *kidding!*)

In learning Kanji, there is at least two things you have to be mindful of - (1) the stroke order and (2) the reading. Yes, Sir, there are rules for these.  The Japanese language is easy enough to speak if your native language is in phonetic syllabary as well but the written Japanese is not as simple as that. Then there’s the challenge of changing readings when one kanji is used with a different hiragana or another kanji - it just morphs! And I get confused. A lot. I have no right to teach you those now!

So, what I can do is feature a kanji or two (or three) in a post and we can all try to learn it for the day! Eventually, I will be able to better explain how each on mutates. =)

Today’s Kanji:

kunyomi: ひと
onyomi: JIN (ジン) , NIN (ニン)

There is much room for improvement for such posts as this, I know. I’ll make these posts more informative as we go along and learn more.~

My reference is the book Tuttle Mastering Japanese Kanji Volume 1. (See, I’m serious! I want to learn!)

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