in the book will fall into this category.
Common Pronunciations
Common ON reading: SAN (サン)
Common kun reading: yama (やま)
This kanji has only one on-yomi and one kun-yomi (the pronunciation of which – together with all others in this book – can be heard on the accompanying
We now need to link the meaning of the kanji to its sounds by using the words “mountain”, “sandwich”, and “yam appetizer” in a sentence. Let’s try this: I had a yam appetizer and a SANDWICH on the Mountain. For future review, write this sentence in the box below.
Now for some common words that make use of this kanji. There’s no need to worry for the moment about being unable to recognize the other characters, as they will all be learned over the course of the book; at this stage, try to see how the meanings of individual kanji combine to form more complex words (look especially at the fourth example below). This is a useful skill, as it will help foster an intuitive feel for the meanings of unfamiliar compounds that you encounter in the future. It is also one of the most rewarding aspects of learning to read the language. Understanding the logic that went into the formation of a compound not only makes it easier to remember, but offers fascinating insight into the minds of the people who devised it hundreds – if not thousands – of years earlier.
Remember that the uppercase letters and katakana here indicate on-yomi, with lowercase letters and hiragana indicating kun-yomi. Recall as well from the introduction that this is our first instance of a character whose unvoiced reading can sometimes become voiced (in examples 3 - 4, where the on-yomi changes from SAN to ZAN). Note how the first kanji of the entry below is presented in bold face – indicating that this is a word you now know.
| COMMON WORDS AND COMPOUNDS | ||
| 山 | mountain | yama やま |
| 一山 | one + mountain = a pile of something | hito·yama ひと.やま |
| 高山 | tall + mountain = alpine | KŌ·ZAN コウ.ザン |
| 火山 | fire + mountain = volcano | KA·ZAN 力.ザン |
| 山村 | mountain + village = mountain village | SAN·SON サン.ソン |
Each entry concludes with a sample sentence featuring the character under discussion; any unfamiliar kanji in these sentences are introduced later in the book.
| SAMPLE SENTENCE: | ||||
| 山 | に | 木 | が | ありません。 |
| yama | ni | ki | ga | arimasen. |
| mountain | tree | are not | ||
| = There are no trees on the mountain. |
KANJI #2
| 人 | PERSON |
Meaning
Person/Human being. Another visually simple kanji for which no story is required. When appearing at the end of country names, this kanji denotes an individual’s nationality.
Common Pronunciations
Common ON reading: JIN (ジン); NIN (ニン)
Common kun reading: hito (ひと)
As mentioned in the introduction, 人 is a character that challenges every student of Japanese. As there are few patterns to its distribution of readings, words containing it often need to be memorized individually. JIN, however, tends to signify that a person belongs to a certain subgroup of humanity, while NIN indicates a person engaged in an activity specified by the kanji preceding it. Look for JIN in the first position and at the end of words signifying countries, and be aware that the kun-yomi is always voiced (changes from hito to bito) when it appears outside of the first position, as it does in the sixth compound below.
We now need our keywords and sentence for the three readings. For JIN and NIN let’s choose “JEANS” and “NINCOMPOOP”. As you did in the previous entry for 山, turn to the on-yomi table at the end of the book, but this time write “Jeans” in the space next to JIN and “Nincompoop” in the space next to NIN. For the kun-yomi “hito” we’ll use “heat open”. We can now throw everything together into the sentence “That Person is a NINcompoop because they heat open their JEANS”. For future review, write this sentence in the box below.
Here are our initial encounters with irregular readings. Note that the irregular reading in the first two examples belongs to 人; as you will learn in the next two entries, “一” and “二” are read with their normal kun-yomi. In the final compound, both readings are irregular. All three of these words are best thought of as special cases, and memorized individually.
| IRREGULAR READINGS | ||
| 一人 | one + person = one person | hito.ri ひと.り |
| 二人 | two + person = two people | futa.ri ふた.り |
| 大人 | large + person = adult | otona おとな |
| COMMON WORDS AND COMPOUNDS | ||
| 人 | person | hito ひと |
| 白人 | white + person = caucasian | HAKU·JIN ハク.ジン |
| 人口 | person + mouth = population | JIN·KŌ ジン.コウ |
|
三人
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