Building Kanji & Finding Kanji: How To

[ghp95134]

I just had an interesting chat regarding building kanji in a Japanese online dictionary and thought I'd share it with you.

If one knows proper stroke order and knows the radicals (rather, can count the strokes in a radical then recognize it on a radical chart), then one can find kanji without speaking Japanese.

My go-to for this is Jisho.org.

Jisho.org will give you the option of building kanji by strokes, or by drawing the kanji. As you draw each stroke multiple kanji are presented. I'm not always successful with the drawing method!

Radical method. Here I've begun with the last 4 strokes of the kanji 無.


As I select more and more radicals, I gradually build the kanji; now I've selected a second radical (the actual 1st stroke of the kanji). As you can see the 無 kanji has now shifted to the third choice.


Drawing method: As you draw strokes various kanji appear. Not always a winner. I do this in proper stroke order -- I do not know how it responds if you just make the strokes incorrectly (a proper way to form 口, etc.) or willy-nilly.


Good luck!
-- Guy

[ghp95134]

Now that you've positively identified your mystery kanji, select 無 and it will appear in the top bar.



Select the magnifying glass and definitions will open on a new page.


-- Guy

[ghp95134]

New kanji for old .... new kanji for old .... new kanji for old.

If you are somewhat familiar with kanji you'll be aware that the modern kanji sometimes varies with traditional kanji called Kyujitai kanji (former character form kanji).

Jisho's classic page is great because it shows variations of the selected kanji including kyujitai kanji. The new upgrade does NOT have this capability. Let's use 営 as an example. If you import 営 into the search window and select "Search", the kanji will appear. But what's this wee wordie way over to the right?



Select "Variations" and a new page opens showing the variation(s); in this case 營:



Cheers,
-- Guy

[tomp]

Good post! I rely heavily on Jisho as an online resource myself. Overall, a very handy tool to have!

Tom

[bestmsdt]

I like Jisho, too. It doesn't think much of my attempts at drawing though! I supplement this with Jishop, which offers some other options, such as displaying all kanji with a given number of strokes. Jishop is an application, not a web page. It can be downloaded from jishop.com. You get a 1 month free trial of the Advanced version, which anyway only costs $19.95 for a lifetime license.
Cheers,
Tony

[ghp95134]

I should have explained the numbers. The numbers tell the number of strokes in the kanji. For example, 馬 Horse consists of 10-strokes and 黒 Black consists of 11 strokes.



Cheers,
-- Guy

[Bruce Pennington]

Guy,
I tried the pages using 祐, and it didn't give me a link for "variations." Are there some kanji that didn't have variations?

I also tried 兼 and there was not link for variations.

[ghp95134]

Hi Bruce,

Correct, not all kanji have variations. Are you looking for the different styles of written kanji? That takes a special dictionary which I do not think is online. It is called the 1000 Word Poem. The poem comprises 1000 kanji and no two are repeated. The calligraphy tutor takes this poem then inserts four to five different ways of writing: newspaper block, semi-cursive, cursive, and seal script.

This is my copy, it has only 4 styles; reads top to bottom; then it has the various styles of calligraphy: Block / Cursive / Clerical / Seal

海鹹河淡，鱗潛羽翔



Cheers,
-- Guy

[Bruce Pennington]

I was thinking about kanji that have different ways of writing them, like this one from J. Yumoto The Samurai Sword (I don't have the book, another guy posted this at NMB:

[ghp95134]

Yeah. No, that is not a variation -- it's a style of penmanship. The only thing you'll find in online dictionaries is 兼.

What I've done in the past is do a search for "X, Y" where X=kanji and Y=style.

Styles:
行書 Semi-cursive
草書 Grass [cursive]
篆書 Seal
隷書 Clerical

To use your exampe, 兼,

"兼, 篆書"
[kane, seal script]

Type 兼, 篆書 into the search window and then check the results. For some reason I always get a Chinese page when inserting kanji!! The image button is the first one on the left:


And the image results:
Kane seal script results

Here are the results of each style of writing 兼 that I mentioned:
兼, 行書 Semi-cursive Script.

兼, 草書 Grass [cursive] Script.

兼, 篆書 Seal Script

兼, 隷書 Clerical Script.

Have fun!
-- Guy