Chinese writing characters used in Japan.

Chinese characters that compose one of the three basic scripts used for written Japanese ( hiragana and katakana being the other two). Kanji characters represent either an entire word or the stem of a word depending on usage. Though the symbols are more complex and not conducive to phonetic writing (and hence to being used for words borrowed from non-Chinese languages), their meaning is often more clear than the phonetically-written versions of the same word - an important consideration in a language heavily prone to homonyms.

Chinese and Japanese ideograms

Chinese written characters used by the Japanese.

n. A Japanese ideographic alphabet. In kanji, each character is represented by 2 bytes.

Chinese characters representing sound and meaning. Japan adopted kanji as a writing system and adapting it.

Japanese -n. The large set of "Chinese" characters used for writing Japanese. Each represents a concept rather than a sound; each has several associated pronunciations. There are thousands of them, and learning them is nontrivial even for native speakers of Japanese.

One of the four alphabets used in writing Japanese. Kanji is made up of the thousands of pictographic characters imported from the Chinese writing system, with each character representing an entire word or idea. It takes Japanese people many years of education to master the roughly 2,000 kanji required for everyday reading and writing.

The complex characters in Japanese writing borrowed from Chinese.

From Ruby Annotation ( 2001-05-31) Japanese term for ideographs; ideographs used in Japanese. Subset of the Japanese writing system, used together with hiragana and katakana.

Pictograph Japanese character set

One of three different Japanese writing systems. This is a pictoral system, with characters taken from Chinese system. They represent concepts and ideas rather than sounds. Read more about this in my translation notes.

Kanji is the Japanese adaptation of Chinese writing. Although each symbol can carry the meaning of an entire word, kanji are usually used more for the sound that they represent and must be combined with hiragana to make meaningful Japanese words. Since kanji have both a symbolic reading and a phonetic reading, they can be used to construct clever written puns.

complex characters used in the writing of Japanese; they originated from China and are ideograms, which means they represent a picture or idea rather than the phonetic spelling and pronunciation of a word, unlike kana. There are thousands of kanji and comparatively few kana, which means that words (particularly names) that have very different meanings in their original kanji all look the same when translated to kana - or romanji (English characters), which can only be translated back to kana. This is why it's so hard for animé fans to find out the intended meanings of characters' names (and why a lot of Japanese people appear to have the same name).

Japanese script derived from Chinese characters.

characters or letters

a Chinese character as used in Japanese

a Chinese pictograph, a picture that describes a certain word

Japanese system of writing using (sometimes modified) Chinese characters. There are almost 2000 kanji.

The Japanese name for Chinese characters. Also written as 'kanzi'.

The Chinese characters which make up the bulk of the Japanese written language. About 2000 pictograms are required for everyday communication. Readings of individual kanji can vary enormously by context.

The tattooing of Asian Letters and symbols.

Generically used to describe the pictographic symbols used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Specifically used to refer to the Japanese set of Chinese-derived pictographs.

Japanese writing system. Chinese characters are used with Japanese meanings and readings. This is considered more advanced than hiragana and katakana.

Chinese characters (the Japanese use a subset, augmented by two additional sets of their own characters which are phonetic)

Chinese pictographic writing; used for Buddhist texts, sorcerous texts, imperial documents, etc.

Chinese characters used in Japanese writing.

pictographic Japanese characters

One of the three common Japanese alphabets (see also Katakana and Hiragana). Kanji is a set of ideographic symbols (symbols that represent ideas) developed in China, and is extremely difficult to learn. This is mostly because there are well over a thousand Kanji symbols in everyday use in Japan, plus around another thousand that are used more occasionally! Not only this but the context they are used in can change the pronunciation of each symbol quite considerably. Pronounced ‘cahn-jee'.

The Japanese writing system is a conglomerate of three writing styles: two set alphabets -- called hiragana and katagana -- and kanji, which is the name for the Chinese characters that have been absorbed and adapted for Japanese use. The kanji are the biggest stumbling block not only for foreigners trying to read Japanese, but for Japanese school children also. They have to learn the kanji the same way foreigners do... one at a time, slowly. The average newspaper in Japan requires you to know about two-thousand different kanji in order to read it competently; but a traveler in japan can survive with a much smaller vocabulary. For more, see the Japan Survival Guide - Important Kanji To Know.

Japanese written characters. Each character represents an ideographic symbol (represents a thing or an idea).

the set of pictograms used most often in the Japanese language, adopted from Chinese during Japanese invasions of China during the 14th century see also hiragana and katakana

the Japanese alphabet. The Japanese version of Director supports Kanji.

ideographic characters

A graphic character set consisting of symbols used in Japanese ideographic alphabets.