Killer Kanji

JarJar blinks

So I've spoken to Japanese people and I've been to three of Japan's 4 main Islands. And I can tell you one thing, Japanese is a very very difficult language.
One of the hardest things about the Japanese language is the old Kanji characters that have come from China.
Japanese use Kanji every where, for exaple in the underground system it's all Kanji, the street names are in Kanji, books Magazines Newspapers & Comics are filled with Kanji and Towns and Cities have Kanji names.
The Japanese people use about 3,300 Chinese characters, while the Chinese use around 6,000. It is necessary to know about 2,000 Chinese Kanji characters to read a Japanese place name, map book, magazine or person's name.

Simple Kanji River: (Kow-wah) the Kanji actually looks like a river:
KA-WA looks vary like a river
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Mouth or Cave: Looks like a Square
░

"Fire" Looks like a Flame

But some Kanji look very very abstract.

http://www.kanjisite.com/

Here are some sites on Kanji


http://coolest.com/penpen/

http://japaneseculture.about.com/bl50kanji5_arashi.htm

http://www.joyo96.org/Grade_1.html

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2046.html

http://www.logoi.com/japanese/index.html

http://www.zenkou.com/kanji.asp

BJJ

Thanks for the links

Cake Fiend

Yeah, the Japanese themselves spend years of their lives learning their own written language (it's normal for Japanese schoolchildren to learn kanji all the way up to college); imagine how hard it would be for a gaijin to get used to it.

If you want to start learning to write Japanese characters, I'd recommend starting with hiragana and katakana. These two alphabets consist of characters used to represent single syllables only, so there are only 46 in either. If you can't write something in kanji, you can spell it out in hiragana. Katakana is only used to spell foreign words.

BJJ

How about posting the most common/frequently used Killer Kanji on this site?

Digi_Tilmitt

I started teaching myself Hiragana 2 weeks ago, i nearly know it all now, yay! Do you people ever get confused between hiragana and katakana? Tell me all great mentats!

DrunkLeprachaun

I learned katakana in around 5 days of undedicated learning(I did it during maths class, while also doing maths), and I learned hiragana in 2 days, and that was just half an hour each day. Do you think this would mean I would be able to pwn kanji faster than you a-ve-rage gaijin?