Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Definition, April 30, 2007

Kanji is one of characters in Japanese which express not only sounds but also meanings. Even though some Kanji letters may have the same sound, each Kanji letter only carries one meaning, so the use of it totally erase misunderstandings. It’s poles apart with other characters, Hiragana and Katakana which can cause misunderstanding since they only express sounds but not the meanings. The example can be seen in the word こっき (kokki) which is written in Hiragana. In this way, without knowing the context, reader may get difficulty in understanding the meaning as こっき has two meanings, flag and sacrifice. However, when the word is written in Kanji, the meaning can be understood easily even without context. When it is written as 国旗 , it means flag; and when it is written as 克己 , it means sacrifice. For that reason, Kanji is commonly used in literature.
Ika Dian Sukmayanti
MPBI X
Unika Widya Mandala Surabaya

1 comment:

Ubaya Language Center said...

Good work, Ika! I didn't have any single frwon when reading your essay. Very coherent, and proper uses of cohesive devices. Keep up the good work.

Patrisius