KANA/KANJI Lesson Six - Verb Kanji

[Starry Starry Fright]

Well guys, as you already know, all Japanese sentences must contain verbs. Unsurprisingly, most Japanese verbs get their own kanji. Learning these kanji makes reading sentences much easier and faster, and therefore, you need to know them.

Without further ado, here are some of the verbs you know, written in their full kanji forms, along with explanations. If some of these kanji are hard to see in this tiny font, copy and paste them into a word document and set the font to a gigantic size.

食べます
食 = た
"to eat"
This kanji is supposed to represent a lid with something good underneath it.

飲みます
飲＝の
"to drink"
If you look at the left half of the kanji, you can see a smaller version of the "tabemasu" kanji.

行きます
行＝い
"to go"
This kanji resembles a crossroads.

読みます
読＝よ
"to read"
The left half of this kanji is a mouth with sound coming out, which indicates that it has something to do with words or language (this part of the kanji has been previously seen in "語", the kanji for language). The right half represents a bookseller.

話します
話＝はな
"to speak"
Again, on the left half, we see that word/language structure. The right half of the kanji is composed of "thousand" (top) and "mouths" (bottom). Taken together, the two halves of the kanji mean something like "words of a thousand mouths" and the character has come to mean "to speak".

帰ります
帰＝かえ
"to return"
The left half of this kanji is a depiction of a knife, and the right half is a depiction of a broom. Why do these two put together mean "to return"? I have absolutely no idea. The character has been simplified over the years from a much more complicated old kanji.

歩きます
歩＝ある
"to walk"
The top half of this kanji depicts a footprint. The bottom half means "few". Taken together, they mean "a few footprints", which has come to mean "to walk".

遊びます
遊＝あそ
"to play"
You might have to blow this one up a bit to really see all the parts. The left half is a stylized version of "to walk", the kanji we saw above. The right half means "to move or roam freely". If you look closely, you can see the kanji for "child" (子) in the right half.

見ます
見＝み
"to see"
This is, quite literally, a picture of a giant eyeball with legs. Yeah.

見せます
見＝み
"to show"
I put this in here to demonstrate that kanji can belong to multiple verbs. It's the same kanji, with the same reading, but the meaning is different than the meaning we saw above. Always make sure that you read the whole verb, hiragana and all, before you decide on a meaning.

Well, that concludes my quick lesson on verb kanji. If you have any questions or comments, post them here and either myself or my lovely prefect will get back to you.  

[Kai Shi]

I find that kanji makes it significantly easier to pick the grammar out in a sentence. I hated it at first, thought there was no point to it and it just was too hard. But then I found that reading a wall of hiragana is harder. Kanji gives you specific -meaning-.

Yep, just my 2 cents.  

[Nana Shinu Ai]

Well the hiragana is hard. Kanji has meaning to it. sort of easy but. to walk then it said top half is foot print. bottom half means few. How is it different when saying in Kanji and hiragana. i would like to have more example please because i am not understand how the Hiragana works with Kanji together.  

[Animas-Princess]

I really do want to learn more Kanji, but I find it difficult when it's typed rather than written down. Especially because stroke order gets thrown right out the window and cannot be truly specified. However, I'll try my best to learn the ones I don't know.  

[Nana Shinu Ai]

I think the Kanji and Hiragana confuses me the most.  

[Starry Starry Fright]

Animas-Princess

I really do want to learn more Kanji, but I find it difficult when it's typed rather than written down. Especially because stroke order gets thrown right out the window and cannot be truly specified. However, I'll try my best to learn the ones I don't know.

Yeah, I hear you. In an ideal situation I'd be standing over you with an ink brush, drilling stroke order into your brains. biggrin

The Yamasa Institute has posted a fabulous solution to this problem online. If you can type Japanese on your computer, type in the kanji, click it, and it will show you an animation of the kanji being drawn so you can get the stroke order. You can also search by English meaning and kanji reading; it's a really, really helpful tool.

http://www.yamasa.cc/members\ocjs\kanjidic.nsf/SortedByKanji2THEnglish?OpenView&StartKey=t&Count=30  

[Nana Shinu Ai]

Thanks it helps the link was useful. Is there other site for learning reading Kanji and etc?