As a second language Chinese speaker, your take on “the most difficult kanji” is really refreshing because it focuses on the difficulties of Japanese rather than focusing on the difficulties of writing with characters.
Funnily enough, even the hardest kanji for me to produce aren't the ones with the most strokes, but the ones with the most-and/or seemingly unrelated-mnemonic components, or no components at all like 為. The amount of strokes doesn't seem to be too highly correlated with how often I fail to remember a kanji.
@@FreeBirdJPYT There's also the word 芝生茸 (しばふたけ), which is a species of mushroom normally written without kanji like most species in general. Not that useful but still technically an answer You can actually find this on jisho by searching " *生* *ふ* ". Asterisks search for 0 or more characters, so *生* searches for any words containing 生, and doing the same for ふ searches for words that have both 生 and ふ. This doesn't directly search for cases where 生 is pronounced as ふ so you get lots of words with 不 and 生, but it's easy enough to sift through. At the bottom of the home page on jisho, there's a link to a list of search options where you can find more information on how to do more advanced searches
I think common kanjis are more or less used like prefix and suffix in English. Like gen in general, genetic, generous, generate, hydrogen, carcinogen, tracing back to the root that means birth. Or man in manual, manuscript, manufacture, manure, tracing back to something about using hand.
@@Contxto Yes, but that still can be mapped like that. Think of it like: Ascribing the kanji 元 (incidentally read as "gen", though that gen is not read same as english) meaning "source), to the english atrophied prefix derived from latin "genus" would yield: 元eral, 元etic, 元erous, 元erate, hydro元, carcino元. All those seem like they should have no business sharing a letter in a logographic system. Or using 手 for latin "manus" 手ual, 手script, 手facture, 手re
It’s like the hundreds of phrasal verbs you make in English with words like “on” “off” “out” “in”. At least to me when I was learning English and the only words I didnt understand from the sentences were those.
I'm Japanese, so I've never found 生 difficult. (Normally in Japan, 生 is learned in the first grade of elementary school, and not many people had a problem with it.) However, it is understandable that it is difficult for Japanese learners to understand the various pronunciations and meanings of 生. student, lifetime, birth , live, born, produce, early life, grow, grow ,lawn These are also used quite often in Japan. For people whose native language is Japanese, I think they use Japanese without paying much attention to grammar, conjugation, etc. (At least I use it without realizing it. ) And I think that is probably the reason why the difficulty of 生 is different for native Japanese speakers and Japanese learners. I think learning Japanese is more difficult than I imagined, so I have a lot of respect for it.I think that's really amazing.I hope you will continue to study at a speed that suits you.I'm rooting for you. p.s.The kanji that I find most difficult is 心 [kokoro].This is simple but I think this is one of the kanji that is difficult to write beautifully.
I agree with you. Similar to how English speakers face "fake friends" in modern Japanese, while many English Katakana 外来語 but some of them have different meanings or connotations to their English origin, to me as a native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan there are similarly so many fake friends of Kanji that I recognize but somehow means drastically different things I'd expect. But 生 isn't one of them, because 生 in Chinese is already a super-multi-loaded character that we learned at the lowest grade in elementary school. So I have a very similar relation to Chinese 生 and find myself having no problem intuitive Japanese 生. Since it's taught at such a young age that we don't really develop a clear rational understanding it somehow helps internalize fuzzy concepts like 生 represents. The main difference is that modern Mandarin has its literary/colloquial pronunciation system completely broken so we can't rely on pronunciation alone to distinguish fancy/literary concepts from grass root/colloquial concepts but can only tell from which characters it used together to form a word. 生活、生命、學生、見習生、生鮮、生肉、生長、長生、一生、誕生、生產、生平、生涯 every single one is pronounced the same but clearly having some clusters of distinct meanings and I actually find my native Taiwanese Hokkien (which still have the literary/colloquial pronunciation dichotomy similar to kunyomi and onyomi) helps classify them into two groups and learning Japnese actually helps me to even further categorize them because each group now have a distinct pronunciation. For hardest to write, I find ひ and ふ are the two most difficult to write properly or elegantly for me.
Chinese here, I found something funny is that how Japanese write 心 especially when the 心 is as the bottom component like 感、思、懸 From those Japanese variety shows and UA-cam videos I watched, I found many Japanese tend to write it like バ which I've never seen other Chinese write like that, and yeah...kind of strange and ugly to me ( livedoor.blogimg.jp/queen888k/imgs/4/3/43bb728d.jpg )
I thought the Kanji for turtle was "亀", am I wrong? (Edit: from the info the kind people who replied gave me, "亀" is the newer one, and "龜" is the traditional)
For your knowledge, there are currently 3 types of fonts, and here is how they are pronounced in Japanese: “繁體字･はんたいじ”(trad.) or “繁体字･はんたいじ”(simp.) - The name of the Traditional Chinese characters used in mainland China, pronounced as “Fántǐzì” in Mandarin. In Japan, there is a different name for it - “舊字體･きゅうじたい”(trad.) or “旧字体･きゅうじたい”(simp.), and it’s pronounced as “Jiùzìtǐ” in Mandarin. (In general, there is not much difference between Chinese traditional and Japanese traditional characters) “简体字･かんたいじ”(Chin. Simp.) or “簡体字･かんたいじ”(Jap. Simp.) - Simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China, pronounced as “Jiǎntǐzì” in Mandarin. (In this case, the Japanese simplified font is much more different than the Chinese one, and not just in name) The Japanese simplified font is called “新字体･しんじたい,” pronounced as “Xīnzìtǐ” in Mandarin. As an example for comparison, let’s look at this Chinese character: 繁體字 ｰ 樂 新字体 ｰ 楽 简体字 ｰ 乐 The Japanese version, as you can see, only simplified 糸 on each side of 白 into 冫, while the Chinese mainland version, instead of doing an original simplification process, adopted the already-existing Grass Script form, or “草書･そうしょ,” pronounced as “Cǎoshū” in Mandarin, into a printed, more square-like form. P.S. You can find most of this information on both the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary.
@@CosmicHase i will explain to you in the Chinese meaning since i never learn Japanese(bc i believe it has petty much the same meaning), there are many characters that has a lot of meaning in it, such as 生 , it meaning :grow, birth, raw or alive , it's is a term of life, meaning of living spirit . For example: we use the adjective "生動" as a form to describe a thing that looks alive or lively, "生" means living things "動" means moving, add together, it means something something you felt alive (like Chinese characters, drawings, descriptions, views)
I am Cantonese, and our writing system is also quite difficult, with some characters (to my knowledge) not being in traditional 'mainland' Chinese, and I imagine Japanese is somewhat like the same, in that aspect. I do not know anything about Japanese language, but I respect anyone to try and take on the writing system!
Hi, person who knows both canto and Japanese here. For Japanese, kanji are usually 一字多音, while for Cantonese it’s usually one pronunciation per character (if u must argue there could be 文讀/白讀分別，eg 生產/生日） The problem for Cantonese you are describing is mainly diglossia and I’d suggest u to read on it :)
@@oishibaking i would say if you learn more about it, it's more difficult, 一字多音 most characters have 9 sounds of pronunciation , it's very difficult to learn it all, at least myself as a native Cantonese speaker is struggling to learn it🥲😞 💀💀
My favourite method for kanji was in my Anki decks I'd put the translation of the word on the face of the card, and the kanji in the back, thus forcing myself to memorize everything off the top (and not giving me a choice but to handwrite every single one of them), two years later of this method and I'd highly recommend this strategy! It might seem like the learning curve is steep, and it is... but in the long run I saw it helped to actually obtaining the language rather than learning to visually distinguish letters (which in my case as a visual learner that's easier), it provides a great exercise
本 having the vague meaning of book or counter for cylinders makes more sense if you think about the word like how we use "log", a rolled up text scroll kind of looks like a log, same with pencils and umbrellas, on top of this we also use "logs" for documentation. thinking of kanji like street signs helps, they usually present concepts, and combinations may have specific names which are totally different from the signs by themselves.
8:27 as a brazillian I found this exact bit so freaking funny because we have a verb conjugation called "preterito mais que perfeito" which a rough translation would be "more than perfect past tense" (by using it you are basically saying that you did an action in the past after you did another), basically finding ou that some random 2000 years(edit: damn I almost got how old it is right. Yeah just a millennium off) old japanese word has a conjugation which it's name looked alike to that random bit of portuguese grammar is funny to me
I like characters which are the opposite like 采. Where 采 and 菜 are like the English word "plant" it's both a verb and noun, and the addition of 艹 is just to tell the difference between the noun and verb.
As a Chinese speaker, I'd say they have petty much the same meaning between both Chinese characters and kanji (but in Japanese kanji some have more meanings), such as 本 as you mentioned, its pretty much the same , having different meanings and messages in the character , it means: book in noun form , such as "一本書(a book)", present, main, origin, true in adjective form such as "本來" "本來的" "本身" "本意" "本含意" , but in Chinese character we don't have the last meaning of it.
This is the reason why in some sense besides the tones and stuff, Mandarin chinese is arguably way easier than Japanese, sure there's multiple meaning and pronounciation within some characters but no more than 3, and it's largly regional and accent based, and really you don't need to memorise them to communicate causally in a basic level. not to mention the grammars are way way easier too
Okay sorry I have to say it. I think people need to stop calling languages easier or harder than others. Just because one thing is easier for English speakers doesn’t mean that it’s easy in general and I’m getting tired of people saying stuff like that because it’s perpetuates this idea that English is easy/normal and everything else that isn’t enough like English is strange… I think it’s rather disheartening. What would be more proper to say is that “Chinese is easier than Japanese for English speakers.”
@@urotaion9879 I'm not saying that for English speaker, Both Japanese and Mandarin is my native language it's just my personal take based off my experience speaking and reading them, I felt extremely disrespect by your comment as I think you just discredit me thinking I'm one of those american that think English is the only normal language. I agree that ppl need to stop saying what language is easier or harder, I'm somewhat of a linguist myself too, but it is fact that some aspect of language is just more complex therefore harder to learn, that's why I said "in some sense" not definitively.
@@FAIZAFEI I’m sorry for making you feel disrespected man, Wasn’t aware that you yourself were a native speaker, no intent to be disrespectful, just tired of seeing this pattern in a lot of circles on the internet. Regardless, deepest apologies.
Happy to see more videos from you, especially like this. I’m a linguistics nerd (finished English linguistics, wish I could study Japanese linguistics too but can’t just yet) so these kinds of topics are perfect for me.
As a verb, the kanji is almost always (except for the occassional Classical Japanese verb which is in disuse) followed by okurigana, which makes the only challenge knowing the words. The only thing truly inherently hard about 生 is when to read as go'on (しょう) or kan'on (せい) in unknown compoinds, but that's a trait not even unique to 生.
11:57 Plovers (pronounced "Pluvvers" here) are fairly common in Australia. Like Magpies they are highly territorial and aggressive. Unlike Magpies their aggression is not limited to the spring.
This was a fun video to watch as a Korean learner since, to my knowledge, 生 is always pronounced as "seng" (생). Of course, this means that many Sino-Korean words have the same pronunciation, but you can usually infer the difference from context. I was reading business news a while ago and came across "선물", a Sino-Korean word that usually means "a present". However, turns out it actually means "future" as in "futures contract" (膳物 vs 先物)
As far as I know, Korean mixed script used to have both Sinitic and Korean readings much the way Japanese does, but the Korean readings got dropped a good bit before the system itself was discontinued, leaving most characters to only have 1-2 Chinese readings and all the native Korean vocab written with 한글.
I like this channel with Japanese learning not focusing the Pitch Accent or Intonation but with the story that the kanji character or words can have. But anyways , I always saw this character in japanese school life or school anime and the cultured content . gakusei 学生 -student , joshi-shougakusei 女子小学生 -elementary *, joshi-chugakusei 女子中学生 -junior high * , joshi-koukousei 女子高校生 -high school *girl and so on ......
This video really made a lot of things click for me with regard to kanji, because I didn't really understand how a single character could carry so many meanings, but if you think about kanji like they represent abstract concepts that are used to refer to very specific things by describing them then it makes a lot of sense. It's like Toki Pona, except it's more extreme in its complexity rather than its simplicity. I read somewhere once that when English speakers talk they're trying to convey something very precise with their words, whereas in Japanese it's more about conveying the essence of something, and as long as someone gets the premise of what you're saying it's not as important to understand the specifics. That probably depends a lot on context, like if you're reading a how-to guide on how to perform CPR you probably want a very concrete idea of what you're doing, but it sounds like this kanji is like the embodiment of that.
I kind of gave up trying to memorize all the kanji and their pronuciations. The more important thing is to know how to pronouce it in the words you actually need to use
Isn't sen was the kanji like "previous" , so sensei is like someone who has to "experience our life beforehand" to have the knowledge to teach us? That's just my take when i learnt it
I only know what plovers are because theres a place on a beach i went to as a kid where places were fenced off to protect the habitate of the snowy plover, and the name always stuck in my mind.
Thank you so much for acknowledging that the Genki textbook sucks. I absolutely hate it. It’s the reason so completely gave up on ever using textbooks, and now only consume Japanese Media.
I'd love to hear about your favorite textbooks/resources for studying Japanese. There are so many options for learning but each one I've encountered seems to have it's own issues.
@@peterk.1492 what is worked for me mostly has been independent study and UA-cam. I took Japanese in college, I actually graduated with a minor in Japanese, but I learned much more by living in Japan and using it on a daily basis
@@Corredor1230 that song is perfect. Seriously 10/10 song, The lyrics are heartfelt and Maggie Reilly has the voice of an angel. It’s one of those songs where I could listen to it forever and never get tired of it.
@FreeBirdJPYT It's super nostalgic as well. Truly a great song, I was glad to see someone using a version of it on UA-cam, I haven't met many people who know it.
@@floptaxie68 Simplified Chinese isn't very beautiful or neat looking. It converts too much from grass script to regular script without considering much of its aesthetic.
Great video, I totally agree, the kanji with more meanings/readings are harder for me. I'm not familiar with catalpa but plovers (pronounced 'pluh-vah' where I live) lay their eggs in the middle of parks and fields and then take offence to any person walking by - they swoop at you terrifyingly, similar to magpies.
I would say I should know that "depression" character shown in the beginning, since I want to make a comic/manga where the main character has it in his name. If you couldn't guess being overly anxious and depressed would be (at least attempted to) be represented in his personality and in the story setting. I feel like the people who don't see this as a fun challenge or a way to show others that you can speak their language in a proficient manner, then maybe it shouldn't be one to learn just so you can watch anime. Plus it is a good reason to practice calligraphy also like in the intro
There is no "difficult" kanji. Every single kanji is simple and easy by itself, and is totally learnable. The problem is that some people try to cram those things in their head too fast without consciously looking at their basic structure (radicals for example). 生 is also not a "difficult kanji", its a multi-use kanji that is only difficult if you are trying to learn every reading without context in a short amount of time :D Kanji is a fun and very well structured writing system which is only hyped up to be difficult by people who dont understand how they work. Knowing how to read and write 3000-4000 kanji should be common knowledge/education, but instead every japanese learner (and also japanese people nowdays) takes the shortcut by not learning how to write properly. If you learn how to write the basics (150-200 radicals), you can write every-single-kanji-that-exists by just remembering where the parts in that kanji are... Its not rocket science, I wish people didnt fearmonger learners into not wanting to learn kanji properly :/ Edit: Also, 生う by itself is not used but is part of words like 生い茂る and 生い立ち. Also shitting on Genki is a good point :) It is a shit book and needs to be burned... The ふ pronauntiation: 芝生 (しばふ)
I've been learning a bit of kanji lately and 生 having so many readings reminds of the when I was a beginner in English and used to guess how to pronounce new words 💀safe to say it's something you learn from exposing yourself to the language.
irrealis is still a verb stem in use, it's used for negatives like 走らない where 走ら is the irrealis stem. There were more verb stems in ancient japanese but they got kinda phased out. These days there's five I think
I'd recommend turning down the exposure on your camera a bit. (Or doing something similar to that like lowering the iso, or turning down the brightness in post) Since the detail in your face is kinda blown out/it kinda looks like your face is a blob. Also gotta love those ui gui rui nyui verbs :) (jk I also think calling them る or う verbs is dumb) Also 生、王、主、and 玉 get me and my dyslexic ass all the time
It sounds like Japanese evolved to have lots of native words that phonetically are unrelated but meaning wise can be connected via the concept of 生. So I guess early learners took the Chinese characters and retrofitted it onto those native words thus giving this hodgepodge of different readings.
That is a mistake I see people making again and again: obsessing over kanji. You should focus on words, not kanji. You have to memorize words, not kanji. Even if you could memorize all the billions of kanji in existence, you still wouldn't be able to speak Japanese. Because a language, any language is about words, not individual letters. Because kanji is nothing more than a letter. Just because you have memorized all the 26 letters of the alphabet doesn't mean you can speak a language. Historically each kanji MAY have a meaning. But there are many words in Japanese which are impossible to deduce the meaning from the kanji. 新幹線 for example, means bullet train, but it is impossible to get the meaning of the word from the kanji. So memorizing kanji does not help you. Not just Japanese, for every language you have to focus on words, as they are listed in the dictionary. For every word you have to memorize the meaning, the spelling and the pronunciation. The effort to memorize a word is exactly the same, no matter the language. So Japanese is no more difficult than any other language.
I don't think 新幹線 is a great example. It refers to a specific network of trains in Japan, and means "new main line", which you can get from the kanji, it's just that you won't know what that's referring to without more context. Bullet train is a literal translation of 弾丸列車 which was a nickname for the 新幹線 project due to the appearance of the trains Some better examples would be 当て字 or 熟字訓 words, like 不如帰（ホトトギス）which you would have to dig deep into etymology to figure out why it even has that kanji to begin with (in this case it comes from an urban legend, and there are other ways of writing it based on that same legend like 杜鵑、蜀魂、沓手鳥、時鳥、etc)
True, but on the "memorizing the meanings of words" part, it would be great to note that you have to memorize the usage of the word in a particular context, since meaning of the word can change in different situations. So, learning to use the "speech patterns" in the target language would be more beneficial rather than memorizing different meanings of the word (which is still not as bad as drilling every possible reading of an individual character)
In my experience in trying to gain literacy in japanese, the most confusing word I have come across is 掛ける. The dictionary entry for the app I use has 25 potential definitions and it drives me nuts.
For anyone worried about learning all readings, you’ll inevitably learn all of these when you read enough. I’m at N2 level and I knew like 90% of these. I learnt almost of these from manga
My first language is closely related to Chinese, though we no longer use the characters, so I feel like we have an easier time understanding the meaning of the common kanjis because related words also exist in my language, I now appreciate 生 more in my language because it is way simpler than in Japanese That aside, Im now so confused about the Ichidan and Godan verbs, I was taught them as group 1 and group 2 verb ToT
8:10 Honestly I think the Wiktionary conjugations use some very beautiful and technical, but kind of overcomplicated, language lol. The actual meanings are fairly simple, especially if you just read about the classical Japanese conjugations: Irrealis (未然形) - used before the negative form, and the "Conditional conjunction" in the table. E.g., おは-ず = does not - grow large. Continuative (連用形) - used to make it mean "verb and...", e.g. おひ = grow large and... btw, this is the "masu stem", but I think that's a bad name since it's really just a continuative. Also, in modern Japanese, the continuative is usually expressed using て, but て is actually the continuative of つ (verb which means "completion") itself! Terminal (終止形) - used to end a sentence, but not to modify a noun. This merged with the attributive by modern times. E.g., 草木が生ふ。 Attributive (連体形) - used when it modifies a noun (or other things tbh but technicality), but not when it ends a sentence. E.g. おふる草木は美し。 (美し is the terminal form of what is now 美しい. In classical Japanese 美し was the base form, and 美しき was the attributive, but now it's always the attributive for both, with the /k/ disappearing as well. Realis (已然形) - used to form the Contrasting and Causal conjunctions. It effectively means "when the verb has happened...", whereas the irrealis means "although it has not happened, if it were to happen..." E.g., 生ふれば美しく成る。 Imperative (命令形) - is easy, it means commanding that the verb occur. It exists in modern Japanese too. Also, I'll just comment all the constructions, which are formed using the BASIC SIX conjugations (there are no other original conjugations, just the above six!) plus some other auxiliary verbs. This actually makes it quite easy, because there aren't as many conjugations in Japanese as people think. Negative 生ひず おひず ofizu Formed using 未然形 + ず; ず is the negative particle, and also sees use in modern JP Contrasting conjunction 生ふれど おふれど ofuredo Formed using 已然形 + ど, meaning "although verb..." Causal conjunction 生ふれば おふれば ofureba Formed using 已然形 + ば, meaning "if verb..." Conditional conjunction 生ひば おひば ofiba Formed using 未然形 + ば, meaning again "if" Past tense (firsthand knowledge) 生ひき おひき ofiki Formed using 連用形 + き, where き is the firsthand past tense verb. Past tense (secondhand knowledge) 生ひけり おひけり ofikeri 連用形 + けり, けり is past tense but heard from someone else. Perfect tense (conscious action) 生ひつ おひつ ofitu 連用形 + つ; as mentioned above, つ designates a completed action (perfective aspect), which is why て means what it does (signifies a complete event, followed by another event) Perfect tense (natural event) 生ひぬ おひぬ ofinu 連用形 + ぬ; very similar to つ, but seen as being a natural consequence rather than a willful action. Perfect-continuative tense 生ひたり おひたり ofitari This isn't really a conjugation, but just derived from て + あり, where あり means "being", therefore meaning "finishing the verb and being in the resulting state". And this one is also seen in modern Japanese. Volitional 生ひむ おひむ ofimu This is the equivalent of the よう in 食べよう - む means "looks like" or "want to", so 生ひむ would mean "looks like it will grow tall" or "wants to grow tall"; in any case, used to express volition. Btw, this む turned into ん and later even う, which is what we got e.g. 行こう: 行く is 行かむ in its volitional, namely 行かん or 行かう, and /au/ became /ou/ in modern times, so /ikau/ becomes /ikou/. On a separate note the form た is related to つ and also means past tense, and is also formed with the 連用形 - so, 行った comes from 行き+た, but the medial き was too complicated so it just turned into っ. Welp, anyway, that was my effort at trying to demystify the conjugations. I honestly think they make so much sense and it would be best if they taught new learners this from the very start. Trying to understand modern uses of classical grammar from just modern resources, and also trying to understand the rules of modern grammar that seem kind of arbitrary, like the formation of 行こう or 食べよう or 行った, without old grammar knowledge, is quite hard...
I like the word 先生. In mainland its also a formal male suffix, much like the Japanese XX样. But most, especially in the south, 先生 is also for teacher (regardless of gender). 后生 (the later-born) is a world for youngsters, like in the idiom 后生有望, and the Cantonese colloquial word 后生仔.
Actually, because they never needed to. Let's take the Joyo verb readings of 生: All of them have okurigana (or a disting verb ending if you're counting 生ふ) The only real ambiguity is when it's a noun or affix: two kun readings (なま[-], き[-]) and its kan'on reading ([-]せい[-]), which not only is immediately cleared up by context, but not unique to this kanji at all. Compare the arguably more complicated 下 (した, もと, しも, げ)! Or 中 (なか, [-]ちゅう)
@@ロルロレイ I was thinking like when they decided to change the spelling of some words to use the least amount of kanjis possible. In this case the opposite use different kanjis to reduce the number of readings, for example use this one 産 for birthing and stuff like that.
Imagine if Latin uses an ideogram writing system, and English attempts to use those ideograms to write both the Germanic roots and the adopted Latin roots.
When people wonder why I’m illiterate but conversationally fluent I will show them this video. Idk why people try to keep their kanji skills as good as conversational ability. Kanji is not fun while harassing girls in Japanese vr chat worlds is very fun
As far as I know the etymology behind 先生 is actually first born or more accurately the people that were born before you. Which then japanese reinterpreted as a way to call a teacher (As most teachers would have been called that). In chinese at least I was taught that.
I think that as a person who learned Mandarin first then started learning Japanese, the meanings of many Kanji that are present also in Mandarin, I find easy to remember. However, remembering the pronunciation is extremely difficult because kanji has so many different ones for each kanji vs mandarin where there’s usually only one maybe two. I find things that are kind of irregularly shaped like 母 hard to write. It looks ugly every time.
this video is so amazing! i am going to send this to all of my family and friends so they can learn about the hardest kanji ever! wow! this comment is heartful enjoy it pls
Unlike normal languages like English. Chinese characters are just symbols for objects or a conceptual idea or action. China has been a nation of multiple cultures for thousands of years. The same characters may means opposite things in various thing. For example Japanese has kanji which borrowed from Chinese. People have some common for these characters. But it may have very different meanings
That's why I just gave up and switched to Chinese at some point because 生 at any given moment in any given word will reliably only ever be pronounced "sheng". Just goes to show how brute forced the whole system of Japanese kanji really is.
@ oh, I see, interesting. About 5 months ago someone made a Reddit post on r/learnjapanese titled The hardest Japanese Kanji "生", which went over similar themes. I guess it was a coincidence then
@@FreeBirdJPYT I see, interesting. 5 months ago someone posted a post on the r/learnjapanese subreddit titled The Hardest Japanese Kanji "生", which went over similar things, but I guess it’s just a coincidence then
As a second language Chinese speaker, your take on “the most difficult kanji” is really refreshing because it focuses on the difficulties of Japanese rather than focusing on the difficulties of writing with characters.
@@turnerrives5986 I find the concept of “WAOW LOOK AT ALL THOSE STROKES!” Tiring
Funnily enough, even the hardest kanji for me to produce aren't the ones with the most strokes, but the ones with the most-and/or seemingly unrelated-mnemonic components, or no components at all like 為. The amount of strokes doesn't seem to be too highly correlated with how often I fail to remember a kanji.
@@Johnnyvtg this 为 just looks like a kettle.
龘moment
@@arrowobthats just three dragons, though i find the dragon character pretty tricky
14:41 生 (ふ) is used in 芝生 (しばふ), meaning lawn or grass
@@amariiiiiiiiiiiii thank you so much 🙏
@@FreeBirdJPYT There's also the word 芝生茸 (しばふたけ), which is a species of mushroom normally written without kanji like most species in general. Not that useful but still technically an answer
You can actually find this on jisho by searching " *生* *ふ* ". Asterisks search for 0 or more characters, so *生* searches for any words containing 生, and doing the same for ふ searches for words that have both 生 and ふ. This doesn't directly search for cases where 生 is pronounced as ふ so you get lots of words with 不 and 生, but it's easy enough to sift through.
At the bottom of the home page on jisho, there's a link to a list of search options where you can find more information on how to do more advanced searches
Sounds like it came from a verb or adjective then had ateji because that so weird... Like
I think common kanjis are more or less used like prefix and suffix in English. Like gen in general, genetic, generous, generate, hydrogen, carcinogen, tracing back to the root that means birth. Or man in manual, manuscript, manufacture, manure, tracing back to something about using hand.
Yes, "Manus" is latin for "hand"
That's what etymology does.
But for japanese You have words that already existed before the kanji comes to japan
@@Contxto Yes, but that still can be mapped like that. Think of it like:
Ascribing the kanji 元 (incidentally read as "gen", though that gen is not read same as english) meaning "source), to the english atrophied prefix derived from latin "genus" would yield:
元eral, 元etic, 元erous, 元erate, hydro元, carcino元. All those seem like they should have no business sharing a letter in a logographic system. Or using 手 for latin "manus"
手ual, 手script, 手facture, 手re
...you guys are all thinking in terms of English WAY too much, here 🤨
It's Japanese, not English.
In Kanji it's not how many strokes, it's how many screams your Mandarin teacher screamt at you because you drew 走 with the curve first.
It’s like the hundreds of phrasal verbs you make in English with words like “on” “off” “out” “in”. At least to me when I was learning English and the only words I didnt understand from the sentences were those.
Those still get to me, lol.
Phrasal verbs fuck me up if they aren't the ones that come up often
@@danielantony1882 You will pick phrasal verbs up with time, just keep chipping away at them :)))
@@klondike3112 Yep. Gotta master whatever’s left.
when reading that textbook you feel げんきn't
元気じゃなくなる
@話して日本語 そうだ
笑笑笑
when i see your pfp i feel げんきn't lol
@yippiiiieee OMG A PROJECT SEKAI FAN?????
How dare you 生 that!
exactly. why did he even say/show that
Okay, now I really need that Genki video
same here
+1, just came to the channel looking for it (my brain thought it was already out for some reason)
It's refreshing to see someone talking about the things that are *actually* difficult.
私は日本人なのであまり「生」について難しいと感じたことはありませんでした。（通常、日本では「生」を小学校1年生で習います。そしてあまりそこでつまずく人はいませんでした。）
しかし日本語学習者にとって、様々に変化する「生」の発音や意味を捉えることが難しいのは理解できます。
学生【（がく）せい】,一生【（いっ）しょう】，誕生【（たん）じょう】，生きる【い（きる）】，生まれる【う（まれる）】，生む【う（む）】,生い立ち【お（いたち）】，生やす【は（やす）】，生える【は（える）】，芝生【（しば）ふ】
これらは日本でもそれなりの頻度で使われています。
日本語を母語とする人にとっては文法、活用などはあまり意識せずに日本語を使っていると思います。（少なくとも私は意識せずに使っています。）そしておそらくそれが日本語母語話者と日本語学習者の「生」の難しさが違う理由なのだと思います。
日本語を学ぶことは私の想像を超えるほどの難しさだと思うのでとても尊敬しています。とてもすごいことだと思います。自分に合ったスピードでこれからも勉強してくれると嬉しいです。応援してます。
p.s.私が最も難しいと感じる漢字は「心」【こころ】です。これはシンプルですが、美しく書くことが難しい漢字の1つだと思います。
I'm Japanese, so I've never found 生 difficult. (Normally in Japan, 生 is learned in the first grade of elementary school, and not many people had a problem with it.) However, it is understandable that it is difficult for Japanese learners to understand the various pronunciations and meanings of 生.
student, lifetime, birth , live, born, produce, early life, grow, grow ,lawn
These are also used quite often in Japan.
For people whose native language is Japanese, I think they use Japanese without paying much attention to grammar, conjugation, etc. (At least I use it without realizing it. )
And I think that is probably the reason why the difficulty of 生 is different for native Japanese speakers and Japanese learners.
I think learning Japanese is more difficult than I imagined, so I have a lot of respect for it.I think that's really amazing.I hope you will continue to study at a speed that suits you.I'm rooting for you.
p.s.The kanji that I find most difficult is 心 [kokoro].This is simple but I think this is one of the kanji that is difficult to write beautifully.
I agree with you.
Similar to how English speakers face "fake friends" in modern Japanese, while many English Katakana 外来語 but some of them have different meanings or connotations to their English origin, to me as a native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan there are similarly so many fake friends of Kanji that I recognize but somehow means drastically different things I'd expect.
But 生 isn't one of them, because 生 in Chinese is already a super-multi-loaded character that we learned at the lowest grade in elementary school. So I have a very similar relation to Chinese 生 and find myself having no problem intuitive Japanese 生. Since it's taught at such a young age that we don't really develop a clear rational understanding it somehow helps internalize fuzzy concepts like 生 represents.
The main difference is that modern Mandarin has its literary/colloquial pronunciation system completely broken so we can't rely on pronunciation alone to distinguish fancy/literary concepts from grass root/colloquial concepts but can only tell from which characters it used together to form a word. 生活、生命、學生、見習生、生鮮、生肉、生長、長生、一生、誕生、生產、生平、生涯 every single one is pronounced the same but clearly having some clusters of distinct meanings and I actually find my native Taiwanese Hokkien (which still have the literary/colloquial pronunciation dichotomy similar to kunyomi and onyomi) helps classify them into two groups and learning Japnese actually helps me to even further categorize them because each group now have a distinct pronunciation.
For hardest to write, I find ひ and ふ are the two most difficult to write properly or elegantly for me.
Chinese here, I found something funny is that how Japanese write 心 especially when the 心 is as the bottom component like 感、思、懸
From those Japanese variety shows and UA-cam videos I watched, I found many Japanese tend to write it like バ which I've never seen other Chinese write like that, and yeah...kind of strange and ugly to me ( livedoor.blogimg.jp/queen888k/imgs/4/3/43bb728d.jpg )
日本人ではないですが、一番書きにくいと思っている漢字は「母」です。特に「繁」「毎」のような漢字に入っているなら一生書けないんですw
I thought the Kanji for turtle was "亀", am I wrong?
(Edit: from the info the kind people who replied gave me, "亀" is the newer one, and "龜" is the traditional)
The traditional version is 龜, while that is the J-Simplified Characters.
No, you got it right, that's the japanese version of turtle, the traditional Chinese version is 龜 and the simplified is 龟
@@丶冫氵 ooooh, that makes sense
And thank you for telling me
For your knowledge, there are currently 3 types of fonts, and here is how they are pronounced in Japanese:
“繁體字･はんたいじ”(trad.) or “繁体字･はんたいじ”(simp.) - The name of the Traditional Chinese characters used in mainland China, pronounced as “Fántǐzì” in Mandarin.
In Japan, there is a different name for it - “舊字體･きゅうじたい”(trad.) or “旧字体･きゅうじたい”(simp.), and it’s pronounced as “Jiùzìtǐ” in Mandarin.
(In general, there is not much difference between Chinese traditional and Japanese traditional characters)
“简体字･かんたいじ”(Chin. Simp.) or “簡体字･かんたいじ”(Jap. Simp.) - Simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China, pronounced as “Jiǎntǐzì” in Mandarin.
(In this case, the Japanese simplified font is much more different than the Chinese one, and not just in name)
The Japanese simplified font is called “新字体･しんじたい,” pronounced as “Xīnzìtǐ” in Mandarin.
As an example for comparison, let’s look at this Chinese character:
繁體字 ｰ 樂
新字体 ｰ 楽
简体字 ｰ 乐
The Japanese version, as you can see, only simplified 糸 on each side of 白 into 冫, while the Chinese mainland version, instead of doing an original simplification process, adopted the already-existing Grass Script form, or “草書･そうしょ,” pronounced as “Cǎoshū” in Mandarin, into a printed, more square-like form.
P.S. You can find most of this information on both the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary.
生 goes hard
Raw?
@@CosmicHase google recognizes it with なま reading means raw in japanese, one of the many readings for 生
@Mathias-bz2kr NAMI? I'd like some raw milk.
@@CosmicHase i will explain to you in the Chinese meaning since i never learn Japanese(bc i believe it has petty much the same meaning), there are many characters that has a lot of meaning in it, such as 生 , it meaning :grow, birth, raw or alive , it's is a term of life, meaning of living spirit . For example: we use the adjective "生動" as a form to describe a thing that looks alive or lively, "生" means living things "動" means moving, add together, it means something something you felt alive (like Chinese characters, drawings, descriptions, views)
@@Iam4th thanks.
Still want the raw milk tho.
Loving the soft Gymnopedie in the background
I am Cantonese, and our writing system is also quite difficult, with some characters (to my knowledge) not being in traditional 'mainland' Chinese, and I imagine Japanese is somewhat like the same, in that aspect. I do not know anything about Japanese language, but I respect anyone to try and take on the writing system!
Hi, person who knows both canto and Japanese here. For Japanese, kanji are usually 一字多音, while for Cantonese it’s usually one pronunciation per character (if u must argue there could be 文讀/白讀分別，eg 生產/生日）
The problem for Cantonese you are describing is mainly diglossia and I’d suggest u to read on it :)
@@oishibaking i would say if you learn more about it, it's more difficult, 一字多音 most characters have 9 sounds of pronunciation , it's very difficult to learn it all, at least myself as a native Cantonese speaker is struggling to learn it🥲😞 💀💀
0:12 kanji for depression lmao
i thought it was 「囧」
@@jacquelinefaragoits so sad stop it buy it ice crean you monster 😢
@@flarky_darkHEY!😡
@@flarky_darkTHAT'S NOT NICE! DX
@@flarky_dark DELETE THIS NOW!
My favourite method for kanji was in my Anki decks I'd put the translation of the word on the face of the card, and the kanji in the back, thus forcing myself to memorize everything off the top (and not giving me a choice but to handwrite every single one of them), two years later of this method and I'd highly recommend this strategy! It might seem like the learning curve is steep, and it is... but in the long run I saw it helped to actually obtaining the language rather than learning to visually distinguish letters (which in my case as a visual learner that's easier), it provides a great exercise
ふ【▽生】：
草木が茂る所。複合語として用いられることが多い。「浅茅 (あさぢ) -」「芝-」「園 (その) -」「蓬 (よもぎ) -」
It's used in compounds to mean "a place where plants grow"
Do you fw Skibidi Toilet
@@Reforming_LLwth dud
本 having the vague meaning of book or counter for cylinders makes more sense if you think about the word like how we use "log", a rolled up text scroll kind of looks like a log, same with pencils and umbrellas, on top of this we also use "logs" for documentation.
thinking of kanji like street signs helps, they usually present concepts, and combinations may have specific names which are totally different from the signs by themselves.
Keep calm and say shēng
Keep calm and say shēng
Keep calm and say shēng
Keep calm and say shēng
I am a full-grown man but my brain went SCOOTALOO! for a second in this video...
I noticed her too!
8:27 as a brazillian I found this exact bit so freaking funny because we have a verb conjugation called "preterito mais que perfeito" which a rough translation would be "more than perfect past tense" (by using it you are basically saying that you did an action in the past after you did another), basically finding ou that some random 2000 years(edit: damn I almost got how old it is right. Yeah just a millennium off) old japanese word has a conjugation which it's name looked alike to that random bit of portuguese grammar is funny to me
same in french 😭 probably something from latin. "plus que parfait"
I like characters which are the opposite like 采. Where 采 and 菜 are like the English word "plant" it's both a verb and noun, and the addition of 艹 is just to tell the difference between the noun and verb.
As a Chinese speaker, I'd say they have petty much the same meaning between both Chinese characters and kanji (but in Japanese kanji some have more meanings), such as 本 as you mentioned, its pretty much the same , having different meanings and messages in the character , it means: book in noun form , such as "一本書(a book)", present, main, origin, true in adjective form such as "本來" "本來的" "本身" "本意" "本含意" , but in Chinese character we don't have the last meaning of it.
但是中文的汉字大部分只有一两个读音。日语的有太多读音
@@skydragon5555 我應該是說錯了，應該說粵語才對
so would 日本 not mean "land of the rising sun," but in fact "origin of the day?"
@@NUISANCE_ANIMAL more like "origin of the sun", loosely translated to "(land of) the rising sun."
i love how i don't know shit about writing kanji but still find this videos super interesting
@@Ali-xo2de that means I did my job
This is the reason why in some sense besides the tones and stuff, Mandarin chinese is arguably way easier than Japanese, sure there's multiple meaning and pronounciation within some characters but no more than 3, and it's largly regional and accent based, and really you don't need to memorise them to communicate causally in a basic level. not to mention the grammars are way way easier too
Okay sorry I have to say it. I think people need to stop calling languages easier or harder than others. Just because one thing is easier for English speakers doesn’t mean that it’s easy in general and I’m getting tired of people saying stuff like that because it’s perpetuates this idea that English is easy/normal and everything else that isn’t enough like English is strange… I think it’s rather disheartening.
What would be more proper to say is that “Chinese is easier than Japanese for English speakers.”
@@urotaion9879 I'm not saying that for English speaker, Both Japanese and Mandarin is my native language it's just my personal take based off my experience speaking and reading them, I felt extremely disrespect by your comment as I think you just discredit me thinking I'm one of those american that think English is the only normal language. I agree that ppl need to stop saying what language is easier or harder, I'm somewhat of a linguist myself too, but it is fact that some aspect of language is just more complex therefore harder to learn, that's why I said "in some sense" not definitively.
@@FAIZAFEI I’m sorry for making you feel disrespected man, Wasn’t aware that you yourself were a native speaker, no intent to be disrespectful, just tired of seeing this pattern in a lot of circles on the internet. Regardless, deepest apologies.
Moral or the story: learn words WITH kanji instead of the kanji themselves to know the prounciation
Happy to see more videos from you, especially like this. I’m a linguistics nerd (finished English linguistics, wish I could study Japanese linguistics too but can’t just yet) so these kinds of topics are perfect for me.
As a verb, the kanji is almost always (except for the occassional Classical Japanese verb which is in disuse) followed by okurigana, which makes the only challenge knowing the words.
The only thing truly inherently hard about 生 is when to read as go'on (しょう) or kan'on (せい) in unknown compoinds, but that's a trait not even unique to 生.
THE SCOOTALOO??? HELLO??? Thats such a niche joke the whiplash omg?
Now I know how to call a chicken!
Bruh fr
Me when I see a QuizKnock reference outside of the JP sphere:
11:57 Plovers (pronounced "Pluvvers" here) are fairly common in Australia. Like Magpies they are highly territorial and aggressive. Unlike Magpies their aggression is not limited to the spring.
This was a fun video to watch as a Korean learner since, to my knowledge, 生 is always pronounced as "seng" (생). Of course, this means that many Sino-Korean words have the same pronunciation, but you can usually infer the difference from context. I was reading business news a while ago and came across "선물", a Sino-Korean word that usually means "a present". However, turns out it actually means "future" as in "futures contract" (膳物 vs 先物)
As far as I know, Korean mixed script used to have both Sinitic and Korean readings much the way Japanese does, but the Korean readings got dropped a good bit before the system itself was discontinued, leaving most characters to only have 1-2 Chinese readings and all the native Korean vocab written with 한글.
I like this channel with Japanese learning not focusing the Pitch Accent or Intonation but with the story that the kanji character or words can have. But anyways , I always saw this character in japanese school life or school anime and the cultured content . gakusei 学生 -student , joshi-shougakusei 女子小学生 -elementary *, joshi-chugakusei 女子中学生 -junior high * , joshi-koukousei 女子高校生 -high school *girl and so on ......
「生」is like through, tough, thorough, thought, and though in english; but worse
6:53 KUMAMOTO MENTIONED RAAAAHHHHHHH🦅🦅🦅🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣WHAT THE FUCK IS GOOD PUBLIC TRANSPORT🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
This video really made a lot of things click for me with regard to kanji, because I didn't really understand how a single character could carry so many meanings, but if you think about kanji like they represent abstract concepts that are used to refer to very specific things by describing them then it makes a lot of sense. It's like Toki Pona, except it's more extreme in its complexity rather than its simplicity.
I read somewhere once that when English speakers talk they're trying to convey something very precise with their words, whereas in Japanese it's more about conveying the essence of something, and as long as someone gets the premise of what you're saying it's not as important to understand the specifics. That probably depends a lot on context, like if you're reading a how-to guide on how to perform CPR you probably want a very concrete idea of what you're doing, but it sounds like this kanji is like the embodiment of that.
I kind of gave up trying to memorize all the kanji and their pronuciations. The more important thing is to know how to pronouce it in the words you actually need to use
So "sensei" is the retro way of saying "onii-chan"
100% brain capacity type shit
Daddy and "Oh father who spoils me~"
Isn't sen was the kanji like "previous" , so sensei is like someone who has to "experience our life beforehand" to have the knowledge to teach us? That's just my take when i learnt it
2:39 do you have the link for this video? :0
ua-cam.com/video/N2ulyi98b60/v-deo.htmlsi=AcJgdqTDvrXGl1Yy
channel is quizknock!
@ ありがとう！
I only know what plovers are because theres a place on a beach i went to as a kid where places were fenced off to protect the habitate of the snowy plover, and the name always stuck in my mind.
Excited for the video on why the Genki textbook sucks!! I would love to know what I can use it for versus what i can't 🤔
In short: it’s good for vocabulary but not much else.
Thank you so much for acknowledging that the Genki textbook sucks. I absolutely hate it. It’s the reason so completely gave up on ever using textbooks, and now only consume Japanese Media.
THANK YOU! This is what I did
I'd love to hear about your favorite textbooks/resources for studying Japanese. There are so many options for learning but each one I've encountered seems to have it's own issues.
@@peterk.1492 what is worked for me mostly has been independent study and UA-cam. I took Japanese in college, I actually graduated with a minor in Japanese, but I learned much more by living in Japan and using it on a daily basis
You need the Japanese Like a Breeze Anki deck. Thank me later
yeah, that kanji does go pretty hard. peace and love
I learnt kanji the way Japanese kids learn it. Super effective, as I can now read most of the regular 2000(-ish).
I like the Moonlight Shadow 8-bit outro. That song is a banger
@@Corredor1230 that song is perfect. Seriously 10/10 song, The lyrics are heartfelt and Maggie Reilly has the voice of an angel. It’s one of those songs where I could listen to it forever and never get tired of it.
@FreeBirdJPYT It's super nostalgic as well. Truly a great song, I was glad to see someone using a version of it on UA-cam, I haven't met many people who know it.
It's a small detail, but 龜 is the old font for 亀.
I cannot read, speak, or write English, so I use Google Translate to translate from Japanese.
@@氵が推し they ruined that kanji fr
簡単が良い🤷
まぁ、でも、中国のが簡単すぎるか（簡体字ね）
台湾のも結構好きなのだが🤔
@@hitotsudaketsukinoko I like that Chinese simplification more than the Japanese one. But the traditional one is way more better.
@@floptaxie68 Simplified Chinese isn't very beautiful or neat looking. It converts too much from grass script to regular script without considering much of its aesthetic.
this is a comment of heartfulness and support
Great video, I totally agree, the kanji with more meanings/readings are harder for me. I'm not familiar with catalpa but plovers (pronounced 'pluh-vah' where I live) lay their eggs in the middle of parks and fields and then take offence to any person walking by - they swoop at you terrifyingly, similar to magpies.
0:28 is that a cirno fumo
@@Jadanbr is that a pachty foom
@@FreeBirdJPYT
There’s a whole lot of funky going on in this thread.
I would say I should know that "depression" character shown in the beginning, since I want to make a comic/manga where the main character has it in his name. If you couldn't guess being overly anxious and depressed would be (at least attempted to) be represented in his personality and in the story setting.
I feel like the people who don't see this as a fun challenge or a way to show others that you can speak their language in a proficient manner, then maybe it shouldn't be one to learn just so you can watch anime.
Plus it is a good reason to practice calligraphy also like in the intro
I love kanji actually, I have so much fun with it
i love your videos!!!
There is no "difficult" kanji. Every single kanji is simple and easy by itself, and is totally learnable. The problem is that some people try to cram those things in their head too fast without consciously looking at their basic structure (radicals for example). 生 is also not a "difficult kanji", its a multi-use kanji that is only difficult if you are trying to learn every reading without context in a short amount of time :D
Kanji is a fun and very well structured writing system which is only hyped up to be difficult by people who dont understand how they work. Knowing how to read and write 3000-4000 kanji should be common knowledge/education, but instead every japanese learner (and also japanese people nowdays) takes the shortcut by not learning how to write properly. If you learn how to write the basics (150-200 radicals), you can write every-single-kanji-that-exists by just remembering where the parts in that kanji are...
Its not rocket science, I wish people didnt fearmonger learners into not wanting to learn kanji properly :/
Edit: Also, 生う by itself is not used but is part of words like 生い茂る and 生い立ち.
Also shitting on Genki is a good point :) It is a shit book and needs to be burned...
The ふ pronauntiation: 芝生 (しばふ)
The orange chicken was a whiplash I wasn't expecting
That’s a pony not orange chicken
Its a very strange gorilla
I've been learning a bit of kanji lately and 生 having so many readings reminds of the when I was a beginner in English and used to guess how to pronounce new words 💀safe to say it's something you learn from exposing yourself to the language.
Off topic but I just love the Lady Gaga vinyl randomly in the background
irrealis is still a verb stem in use, it's used for negatives like 走らない where 走ら is the irrealis stem. There were more verb stems in ancient japanese but they got kinda phased out. These days there's five I think
2:38 I recognize what channel that is, it’s QuizKnock
please make it so that I don't think my screen's dirty every time there's a white background, thanks
6:31 what was scootaloo doing there bro 😂
I'd recommend turning down the exposure on your camera a bit. (Or doing something similar to that like lowering the iso, or turning down the brightness in post) Since the detail in your face is kinda blown out/it kinda looks like your face is a blob.
Also gotta love those ui gui rui nyui verbs :)
(jk I also think calling them る or う verbs is dumb)
Also 生、王、主、and 玉 get me and my dyslexic ass all the time
It sounds like Japanese evolved to have lots of native words that phonetically are unrelated but meaning wise can be connected via the concept of 生. So I guess early learners took the Chinese characters and retrofitted it onto those native words thus giving this hodgepodge of different readings.
That is a mistake I see people making again and again: obsessing over kanji.
You should focus on words, not kanji.
You have to memorize words, not kanji.
Even if you could memorize all the billions of kanji in existence, you still wouldn't be able to speak Japanese.
Because a language, any language is about words, not individual letters.
Because kanji is nothing more than a letter.
Just because you have memorized all the 26 letters of the alphabet doesn't mean you can speak a language.
Historically each kanji MAY have a meaning.
But there are many words in Japanese which are impossible to deduce the meaning from the kanji.
新幹線 for example, means bullet train, but it is impossible to get the meaning of the word from the kanji.
So memorizing kanji does not help you.
Not just Japanese, for every language you have to focus on words, as they are listed in the dictionary.
For every word you have to memorize the meaning, the spelling and the pronunciation.
The effort to memorize a word is exactly the same, no matter the language.
So Japanese is no more difficult than any other language.
I don't think 新幹線 is a great example. It refers to a specific network of trains in Japan, and means "new main line", which you can get from the kanji, it's just that you won't know what that's referring to without more context.
Bullet train is a literal translation of 弾丸列車 which was a nickname for the 新幹線 project due to the appearance of the trains
Some better examples would be 当て字 or 熟字訓 words, like 不如帰（ホトトギス）which you would have to dig deep into etymology to figure out why it even has that kanji to begin with (in this case it comes from an urban legend, and there are other ways of writing it based on that same legend like 杜鵑、蜀魂、沓手鳥、時鳥、etc)
True, but on the "memorizing the meanings of words" part, it would be great to note that you have to memorize the usage of the word in a particular context, since meaning of the word can change in different situations. So, learning to use the "speech patterns" in the target language would be more beneficial rather than memorizing different meanings of the word (which is still not as bad as drilling every possible reading of an individual character)
This is what I always recommend to students who are discouraged with Kanji.
In my experience in trying to gain literacy in japanese, the most confusing word I have come across is 掛ける.
The dictionary entry for the app I use has 25 potential definitions and it drives me nuts.
Good stuff!
For anyone worried about learning all readings, you’ll inevitably learn all of these when you read enough. I’m at N2 level and I knew like 90% of these. I learnt almost of these from manga
生 being ふ is actually one of the reason why 桐生 being pronounced as Kiryu. Its kana is originally きり-ふ, which turns into きりゅう in modern pronunciation.
I agree the hard part of Kanji is how many readings some of them have.
My first language is closely related to Chinese, though we no longer use the characters, so I feel like we have an easier time understanding the meaning of the common kanjis because related words also exist in my language, I now appreciate 生 more in my language because it is way simpler than in Japanese
That aside, Im now so confused about the Ichidan and Godan verbs, I was taught them as group 1 and group 2 verb ToT
You weren't wrong about the meaning of "Ubu" I've heard it before like that
CIRNO FUMO SPOTTED‼️‼️‼️youmu APPROVED
That payu is related to modern haeru due to regular p->h sound change
I don't think there are any hard or easy kanji. There's just kanji that have rather streamlined or rather unique vibes.
Waiting for the collab with Kira sensei
8:10 Honestly I think the Wiktionary conjugations use some very beautiful and technical, but kind of overcomplicated, language lol.
The actual meanings are fairly simple, especially if you just read about the classical Japanese conjugations:
Irrealis (未然形) - used before the negative form, and the "Conditional conjunction" in the table. E.g., おは-ず = does not - grow large.
Continuative (連用形) - used to make it mean "verb and...", e.g. おひ = grow large and... btw, this is the "masu stem", but I think that's a bad name since it's really just a continuative. Also, in modern Japanese, the continuative is usually expressed using て, but て is actually the continuative of つ (verb which means "completion") itself!
Terminal (終止形) - used to end a sentence, but not to modify a noun. This merged with the attributive by modern times. E.g., 草木が生ふ。
Attributive (連体形) - used when it modifies a noun (or other things tbh but technicality), but not when it ends a sentence. E.g. おふる草木は美し。 (美し is the terminal form of what is now 美しい. In classical Japanese 美し was the base form, and 美しき was the attributive, but now it's always the attributive for both, with the /k/ disappearing as well.
Realis (已然形) - used to form the Contrasting and Causal conjunctions. It effectively means "when the verb has happened...", whereas the irrealis means "although it has not happened, if it were to happen..." E.g., 生ふれば美しく成る。
Imperative (命令形) - is easy, it means commanding that the verb occur. It exists in modern Japanese too.
Also, I'll just comment all the constructions, which are formed using the BASIC SIX conjugations (there are no other original conjugations, just the above six!) plus some other auxiliary verbs. This actually makes it quite easy, because there aren't as many conjugations in Japanese as people think.
Negative 生ひず おひず ofizu Formed using 未然形 + ず; ず is the negative particle, and also sees use in modern JP
Contrasting conjunction 生ふれど おふれど ofuredo Formed using 已然形 + ど, meaning "although verb..."
Causal conjunction 生ふれば おふれば ofureba Formed using 已然形 + ば, meaning "if verb..."
Conditional conjunction 生ひば おひば ofiba Formed using 未然形 + ば, meaning again "if"
Past tense (firsthand knowledge) 生ひき おひき ofiki Formed using 連用形 + き, where き is the firsthand past tense verb.
Past tense (secondhand knowledge) 生ひけり おひけり ofikeri 連用形 + けり, けり is past tense but heard from someone else.
Perfect tense (conscious action) 生ひつ おひつ ofitu 連用形 + つ; as mentioned above, つ designates a completed action (perfective aspect), which is why て means what it does (signifies a complete event, followed by another event)
Perfect tense (natural event) 生ひぬ おひぬ ofinu 連用形 + ぬ; very similar to つ, but seen as being a natural consequence rather than a willful action.
Perfect-continuative tense 生ひたり おひたり ofitari This isn't really a conjugation, but just derived from て + あり, where あり means "being", therefore meaning "finishing the verb and being in the resulting state". And this one is also seen in modern Japanese.
Volitional 生ひむ おひむ ofimu This is the equivalent of the よう in 食べよう - む means "looks like" or "want to", so 生ひむ would mean "looks like it will grow tall" or "wants to grow tall"; in any case, used to express volition. Btw, this む turned into ん and later even う, which is what we got e.g. 行こう: 行く is 行かむ in its volitional, namely 行かん or 行かう, and /au/ became /ou/ in modern times, so /ikau/ becomes /ikou/.
On a separate note the form た is related to つ and also means past tense, and is also formed with the 連用形 - so, 行った comes from 行き+た, but the medial き was too complicated so it just turned into っ.
Welp, anyway, that was my effort at trying to demystify the conjugations. I honestly think they make so much sense and it would be best if they taught new learners this from the very start. Trying to understand modern uses of classical grammar from just modern resources, and also trying to understand the rules of modern grammar that seem kind of arbitrary, like the formation of 行こう or 食べよう or 行った, without old grammar knowledge, is quite hard...
I like the word 先生. In mainland its also a formal male suffix, much like the Japanese XX样. But most, especially in the south, 先生 is also for teacher (regardless of gender). 后生 (the later-born) is a world for youngsters, like in the idiom 后生有望, and the Cantonese colloquial word 后生仔.
I wonder why during the 19th-20th century spelling reforms they never fixed the ambiguities of this character.
Actually, because they never needed to.
Let's take the Joyo verb readings of 生: All of them have okurigana (or a disting verb ending if you're counting 生ふ)
The only real ambiguity is when it's a noun or affix: two kun readings (なま[-], き[-]) and its kan'on reading ([-]せい[-]), which not only is immediately cleared up by context, but not unique to this kanji at all. Compare the arguably more complicated 下 (した, もと, しも, げ)! Or 中 (なか, [-]ちゅう)
@@ロルロレイ I was thinking like when they decided to change the spelling of some words to use the least amount of kanjis possible. In this case the opposite use different kanjis to reduce the number of readings, for example use this one 産 for birthing and stuff like that.
0:18
Weird, i just watched that video yesterday lol, it's like 8 years old.
Fun videos though, i like that guys street interview!
7:00
🎵恋が生まれる君の中で🎶🍦
Imagine if Latin uses an ideogram writing system, and English attempts to use those ideograms to write both the Germanic roots and the adopted Latin roots.
When people wonder why I’m illiterate but conversationally fluent I will show them this video. Idk why people try to keep their kanji skills as good as conversational ability. Kanji is not fun while harassing girls in Japanese vr chat worlds is very fun
chad
Because writing Kanji is… one of the things of all time.
As far as I know the etymology behind 先生 is actually first born or more accurately the people that were born before you. Which then japanese reinterpreted as a way to call a teacher (As most teachers would have been called that). In chinese at least I was taught that.
And not to forget 後生 meaning younger since they are born later :)
I think that as a person who learned Mandarin first then started learning Japanese, the meanings of many Kanji that are present also in Mandarin, I find easy to remember. However, remembering the pronunciation is extremely difficult because kanji has so many different ones for each kanji vs mandarin where there’s usually only one maybe two. I find things that are kind of irregularly shaped like 母 hard to write. It looks ugly every time.
this video is so amazing! i am going to send this to all of my family and friends so they can learn about the hardest kanji ever! wow! this comment is heartful enjoy it pls
@@gdvyxenn thank you 🥺🥺
Isn't ヒゲを生やす more like 'To cultivate a beard'?
Beard sprouts would be 生える methinks
The only place where I've seen it read as ふ is in 芝生 - lawn
2:49-3:17 Interesting how that's similar to how Arabic works, specifically the triliteral root k-t-b (ك-ت-ب) in this example.
Weezer: 生 it ain’t s生
知りませんでした！使わせていただきます。
i love your videos
The Wiktionary give furigana おう for 生ふ. It finally use a kana to pronounce another kana :D
生ふ is the historical kana usage of 生う。
Good take
鬱 鑿 鬮
Which is your favourite?
𱁬 𰻞🗣️🔥
龘燚壨言
上 and 下 left the chat
in due time
It's harder than Chinese for that reason (kun'yomi). But I most likely wouldn't give much attention to it if Japanese was my native language.
Unlike normal languages like English. Chinese characters are just symbols for objects or a conceptual idea or action. China has been a nation of multiple cultures for thousands of years. The same characters may means opposite things in various thing. For example Japanese has kanji which borrowed from Chinese. People have some common for these characters. But it may have very different meanings
@@EricLeung-hk “normal languages” 💀💀
4:10 I'm trying to clean my screen
looks like its "fu" in 芝生 (shibafu) lawn
14:41 the good part
30 seconds no vi... you know what? nevermind.
No What?!!?
That's why I just gave up and switched to Chinese at some point because 生 at any given moment in any given word will reliably only ever be pronounced "sheng". Just goes to show how brute forced the whole system of Japanese kanji really is.
I, too, have seen that Reddit thread. Jokes aside, great video! I am looking forward to your Genki review as I have issues with the textbook myself
Which Reddit threat are you referring to? I am not privy to your reference
@ oh, I see, interesting. About 5 months ago someone made a Reddit post on r/learnjapanese titled The hardest Japanese Kanji "生", which went over similar themes. I guess it was a coincidence then
@@FreeBirdJPYT I see, interesting. 5 months ago someone posted a post on the r/learnjapanese subreddit titled The Hardest Japanese Kanji "生", which went over similar things, but I guess it’s just a coincidence then