1. 2. Introduction to Kanji This lesson introduces the non-phonetic writing system of Japanese, kanji. Kanji literally means "Chinese characters," and they're used to build content words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Kanji Readings So how do you read kanji? Most kanji have at least two possible readings. Typically, one reading is derived from a native Japanese word, and one reading is derived from a Chinese loanword. These are called "kunyomi" ("meaning reading") and "onyomi" ("sound reading") respectively. Let's take the kanji for "country," 国 。On its own, we use the Japanese "kunyomi" reading, くに。In Japanese, くに means "country." However, in compounds, we use the "onyomi" reading of こく。Therefore, China, 中国 or "middle country," is read as ちゅうごく。 Rendaku So why isn't it ちゅうこく？This is due to a phenomenon known as "rendaku" or "sequent...