Everyone knows that the Japanese use Chinese characters, or kanji, as part of their writing system, but since kanji are so different from anything we use in the West, they seem like random chicken scratches at times. Actually, they’re laid out in a very standard and logical designed to make it easier to cross-reference characters in dictionaries. Many kanji have “radicals,” parts of the character that give hints about the overall meaning. For example, the character for “to say” (which happens to look like a stack of books on a shelf) forms the left half of characters for “to read” “to speak” and “to translate.” Similarly, kanji that have to do with water or the sea contain the radical that represents water, making it easier for you to link the concepts cognitively. So while kanji is hard for Westerners to learn to read, it’s not nearly as impossible as seems at first. (Remember that J-List has tons of Japanese study supplies for you, in stock right now.)
Onii-chan, No! When Translators Don’t Follow Japanese Naming Conventions
How do you feel when you're watching anime and a character uses an honorific like "Onii-chan," but the subtitles use...
