Do Chinese and Japanese have any similarity in their written characters? ?

Question

Do Chinese and Japanese have any similarity in their written characters? ?

Answer 1

Yes.

The Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan by Buddhist monks. The complex Japanese writing system (Kanji) is taken directly from Chinese. Many characters keep the same meaning and pronunciation (with additional meanings and pronunciation added as well from the Japanese language.)

Hiragana and Katakana (the other two Japanese writing systems), are simplified from Chinese characters but in the simplified version are unique to Japan and have no meaning in Chinese.

Answer 2

Yes. Chinese characters are the true originals - the oldest date back to 5,000 years ago. In Chinese they are called 'hanzi'. Buddhist monks took these characters to Japan, where they are called 'kanji'. As well as kanji, the Japanese simplified them in to hiragana which is turn were simplified into katakana (I think). The main difference between the kanas and kanji is that kanji have at least one certain meaning and pronunciation whereas the kanas act like an alphabet and stand for a letter or syllable, thus aiding reading. In Chinese you've got to know how to say the character as well as what it means because most characters can't help you in this way.

Answer 3

The original characters are of course from China. They have plenty of Hanzi's that even the Chinese people in China don't know all of them. Japanese Chinese Characters are called Kanji which was brought to Japan by the Buddhists monks and from different Chinese Dynasties.

And in Korea, it's called Hanja. They pronounce all the Chinese charatcres entirely using Korean. Not all words can be understood between the Japanese and Chinese. For example 手紙 is Letter in Japanese but in Chinese it means "Toilet Paper". So, eventhough Japanese and Chinese use the same characters, it doesn't mean that they can understand what is written. Plus, there are some Chinese Characters in Japan that can't be found (or haven't been used) in China and Chinese people don't recognize that Character eventhough it's a Chinese Character(s). The same goes for Hanzi, not all of them are understandable to the Japanese. Probably it looks the same but the meaning(s) can be really really different. Even the Chinese and Japanese numbers and months have the exactly same characters but their pronunciation isn't the same with the Chinese and Japanese.

eventhough both countries are using the same characters, but at the same time, both are completely different.

Answer 4

China actually ruled the islands of Japan for a long time, which means Japanese borrows a lot of Chinese characters. For example, 爱 ("love," pronounce "ai" in Japanese and "ài" in Chinese) and 人 ("man," pronounced "hito" in Japanese and "rén" in Chinese) just to name a couple.

The Japanese technically have what are called "onyomi" and "kunyomi" readings of kanji (those are the borrowed Chinese characters). The "onyomi" is the way it was read in Chinese at the time that character was introduced in Japan, and the "kunyomi" is the way it's read in native Japanese. So for instance, 東 (part of the city name Tōkyo, written 東京) has multiple readings. The "onyomi" reading is "tō" (as you see in "Tōkyo"), but the Japanese already had a way to pronounce that kanji before the Chinese came - and that was either "higashi" or "azuma."

You can read more about on/kunyomi here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Readi...

Also, Japanese has two other alphabets, which are phonetic. Kanji and Chinese characters represent ideas, not necessarily how you say the word. But hiragana (what the Japanese use for native Japanese words) and katakana (what they use for foreign words) spell out pronunciation in syllables. For example, "Tōkyo" is と (to) お (o) き (ki) ょ (yo) in hiragana, and "Harry Potter" is ハ (ha) ア (a) リ (ri) ポ (po) タ (ta) ア (a) in katakana. Chinese does not have these phonetic alphabets - only Japanese does.

More info on kana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana

A fun romaji/hiragana/katakana converter: http://www.whiteagle.net/j*p/r2kconvert....

Hope this helped!

Answer 5

Yes

Answer 6

yes, but not much

Answer 7

The Japanese borrowed the Chinese characters from the Chinese about 1600 years ago, and originally they tried to write not in Japanese but in Chinese. This didn't work very well, so eventually the Japanese began writing their own language in Chinese characters, and this led to the development of two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) to make the Chinese characters more flexible (to write verb endings, etc.). Basically, the majority of the characters the Japanese use are identical to the Chinese characters. However, in some cases the Japanese have developed slightly different forms for individual characters. So if a Chinese person looks at a Japanese newspaper, for example, he won't actually be able to read it, but he can get the gist of what is being talked about because he recognizes the meanings of most of the characters.

Answer 8

excuse me?

china didnt rule japan. please check your history book again.

japan adapted chinese characters long time ago. we just didnt adopt but adapt. we made lots of different meaning and readint to fit japanese language. coz we already had language but writing systems at that time.

but chinese uses symplyfied characters now. so we cant read chinese anymore.

chinese uses only characters. but japanese uses characters and 2 letter systems in one sentence. so chinese cant read japanese sentence either.

Answer 9

The Japanese have many of the same characters as Chinese and often mean the same as their written language is based on the Chinese one. However, the Japanese also have a different written language called kanji (I think that's how it's spelled) and this looks completely different.