The Four Types of Kanji

象形・指事・会意・形声 Kanji, ideograms that constitute a bulk of the Japanese written language, come in four rough types. Pictographs, Indicators, Combographs, and Meaning-and-Sound Borrowers. The first type is pictographs which stand in for the actual thing they represent. Some researchers claim fewer than 4% are actually pictographs. 1 象形文字 しょうけいもじ 人 biped (human)女 woman手 hand田 ricefield子Continue reading “The Four Types of Kanji”