A good mnemonic for sure, but the character is formed from a phonetic-semantic coupling; namely 骨 being the meaning and 豊 the sound. Also of note is that , 豊 is used to mean lush/abundant today, but is originally a character used to describe a ceremonial vessel or as a variant for 禮 (礼). The proper character that describes lush/abundant is of course 豐.
@@DASmallWorlds Yes, I remembered that Japanese-豊 is = Chinese-豐。 In Chinese, 豊 is read as "lǐ", also 禮(礼)lǐ：gift, 體(体)tǐ：body. And in Chinese, 豐 is read as "fēng", and 豔(艳艷) yàn, 鮮豔：鮮やかな
A few strokes would not make a whole lot of difference in writing speed, and the simplification by discarding parts of the character breaks the association of similar types of character or loses the part that makes up the pronunciation, making them less efficient.
@@fu7725 I myself believe that traditional characters are far more better than simplified, because of the same reason. Even though I am a Greek, I'm fascinated with China, Japan and Korea and their culture.
@@Triantafyllos_Strantzalis I wholeheartedly agree haha, I'm about done with an add-on IME that allows you to type in 正字體 and traditional kana orthography for this exact reason.
Wow, the old kanji is exactly the same as the traditional Chinese writing which is my primary way of writing Chinese, albeit with a bit of different font style and stroke order. Some modern kanji are exactly the same as simplified Chinese but some are Japanese very own, not too simplified, I actually kind of like those in the middle ones.
kanji are chinese characters. there is some slight localization, but they are not japanese. They're just a selection of chinese characters, some of them being (or were) widely used in china, and some of them being less used. Actually, "Kanji" litterally means chinese character, like saying "kanji" out loud is litterally saying "chinese character" in japanese 漢 Kan = China/Chinese (or han dynasty from China) 字 Ji = Character They took it as is from china, aside from a few they slightly altered. Another fun fact : its also the reason why they use hiragana, because Chinese characters were not meant for the japanese language, which is completely different to chinese (not even the same family) and it was (and still is) so complicated and messy they decided to connect the dots with an alternative writing to simplify their writing system and make it easier to use, but it still is funamentally flawed (although it works surprisingly well, but only in the end). I wouldnt go into details because it would take me too long, but thats also why learning kanji is so hard, its like a maze you need to know most of the roads and exits to actually be able to understand it, while in chinese it is way, way more natural.
@@khalilahd. I wish I would pick up Japanese again someday, I took Japanese in college but the class discontinued and so I couldn't advance. I love the three Japanese writing systems Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, since Chinese is my mother tongue, I love the ingenuity of how the Japanese adapt their language to the Chinese language which is very different. Kanji in Chinese is called 漢字 ㄏㄢˋㄗˋ Hanzi, and I use Zhuyin.
That's because they are. 'Old Kanji' (Kyujitai) are based upon the forms found in the Kangxi dictionary, whereas 'New Kanji' (Shinjitai) are simplified versions of those characters
Old kanji characters are still used in some manga and anime titles. For example, '聲の形' (English title: 'A Silent Voice'). The original title means Shape of Voice in Japanese. The author chose this title because of the three parts of "聲". The word "声" means sound, "殳" means the way one uses one's hands, and "耳" means ears.
ive been going around thinking current kanji are hard for me to learn, but then i see the old ones and think about how much more challenging it could really be. either way the kanji look very beautiful, especially when you write them! thank you for this fascinating video
Traditional characters are not tremendously more difficult than the modern versions to remember once you know the radicals, it's just slightly more tedious to write.
My great-grandfather's eldest son, who died as a baby, was named Takara (寶), and, as a foreigner (esp. as one who has been mostly exposed to shinjitai) it was kind of a pain to figure out what the kanji said/meant on a Japanese genealogical record I came across, but then when I figured it out, I found it to be such a beautiful name.
im at the very end of learning the last of hiragana and probably going to be able to start katakana soon. and so far have only learned 2 kanji (cat and green) 😅 good luck on your studies!!
I am so glad that i learned the traditional Chinese characters as i was growing up. I also further studied the ancient scripts on my own. Such as scripts that were used during the Chin and the Han dynasties . I found it extremely interesting and fulfilling, because i can connect with my own culture , heritage and traditions.
Specially, South Korea(Using Han Geul, only pronounce, Meaning is from Kanji), Taiwan, Hong kong and Macao are still using old style kanji😄😄 I have seen much time when I learned those Kanjies.
Reading this as someone who is fluent in Chinese (except for a couple chatacters): Simplified verses Traditional Chinese Japanese stroke order makes me cringe a "bit", to be honest. I have to remind myself that the stroke order isn't wrong, it's just different. 😂😂😂
@@leungandrew1026 There's a good reason why. 100 years ago, everybody used the same traditional Chinese script. But Japan did its own simplification for some characters in the 1940s, while the PRC did its own in the 1950s. Because at that last time, Taiwan was not under PRC and Hong Kong was still a British colony, neither standard was adopted in those places. Malaysia and Singapore used simplified characters that were brought there by immigrants from the PRC.
@@Yuubarium 1. 기사 제목에서 정치인의 성(姓), 국가명, 국제단체 등의 약자(略字)를 적을 때 2. 일부 보수적인 언론사 기사는 아직 한자를 많이 섞어 쓸 때가 있습니다. 3. 인명(人名)의 경우: 관공서 서류 발급 신청시 한글 이름 옆에 한자 이름을 같이 기재하여 제출하는 경우 한국 신분증 종류 중 주민등록증의 성명란은 한글 성명(한자 성명) 이런 형식입니다. 물론, 순수 한글 이름만 가진 사람들도 있으므로 그런 경우엔 한글 성명(漢字 姓+한글 이름) 이렇게 표기합니다. 그 외 일상에서는 한자를 굳이 손으로 적거나 타자를 칠 일이 거의 없습니다. 80년대~90년대 중반까지의 한국 언론사 기사는 한글과 한자를 섞은, 국한문혼용체(國漢文混用體)가 일반적이었습니다. 마치 일본의 は,を,が,に (한국의 -은/는, -을/를, -이/가, -에/에게/-으로/-로. '조사(助詞)'라고 합니다)' 를 제외한 모든 단어를 漢字로 쓰는 것과 거의 같았습니다.
@@Yuubarium There were some people who still use Hanja(Chinese character in Korean) but Chinese character is less used than Japan. But, There is few problems to read text in Hangul-Hanja mixed script(國漢文混用體 in korean,which corresponds to japanese 和漢混淆文) for well-educated Koreans.
Maybe it's just me, but looking at some of the old Kanji, because it uses more of the basic characters, I can actually understand it without knowing how to pronounce it a lot easier than I can with more modern Kanji.
history-though Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì has always had little differences here and there, they were pretty similar until the end of WW2. after that, Japan would decide to moderately simplify its characters, (the People's Republic of) China would decide to _significantly_ revise its characters, and now we have stuff like 氣 - 気 - 气 and 團 - 団 - 团.
I think 學 stroke order is wrong. (Also note that the Japanese government changed the stroke orders some... maybe 70 years ago, although almost nobody mentions this.)
As a girl who studies Chinese (and Japanese too), I will say that kanji from 100 years ago = traditional Chinese characters, and modern kanji = simplified Chinese characters
So... As i am not so familiar with history of Japan, especially japanese language i'm actually quite curious why those changes were made, for an outsider it looks like quite significant changes in only 100 years. Or it isn't that significant? For example my language haven't changed much past 100 years and even then changes were more to sentence construction and wording than to the letters/characters.
Why were modern Chinese characters re-imported from Japan to China? After the Edo period in Japan, during the Meiji Restoration, Japan was the most modernised country in Asia, and many Chinese and Koreans came to Japan to study and work. And some of the Chinese who later returned home became members of the ruling class, such as politicians and educators, who took the Japanese-made Chinese characters they had learnt in Japan and brought them directly back to China and used them. This then spread throughout the country.
It's interesting Japanese stroke order is different to Chinese Stroke order in that the vertical stroke is drawn first before the horizontal strokes when writing the 隹 radical.
Pretty much, though just in Hong Kong. Because HK was still a British colony when the PRC simplified characters, they did not adopt them and kept the traditional script. Cantonese speakers in the PRC write the language in simplified script.
In Chinese there are different types of strokes as well as the accents of different provinces, in traditional they use it a lot in provinces such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, while the simplified it is in the other regions such as Macao and also Hong Kong
Its original intention was to help illiterate people learn writing quickly, after the founding of the PRC. However, in the process of simplification, because a large number of kanji with different meanings were merged and the radicals of many kanji were replaced, even also experienced secondary simplification (During this period, some people's surnames were changed and even new ones were created), The results are actually somewhat confusing.
Today, the kanji used by mainland Chinese are simplified Chinese from the provisions of the 《通用规范汉字表 (通用規範漢字表, the Common Standard Chinese Characters Table)》, but usually, traditional Chinese is still used for calligraphy and couplets.
@@_wilhelm8973 I mean that is true but nothing stops you from using traditional character forms normally either haha, maybe a few odd looks here and there
modern janpanese kanji just like the combination of simplify chinese and traditional chinese. witch I really dont like. As a chinese I want traditional chinese must be succeeded in some way, that cant be in the mainland china, so I hope japan hongkong or taiwan keep using the original kanji or character all the time
