Want Kani Notes of interest

WaniKani is a website with a monthly fee (less than $10) that teaches about 2,000 kanji plus maybe 6,000 vocabulary to go along with that kanji.  I have been trying this out recently and so far I really like it.  It has been a big help.

And there are little tidbits throughout that I am trying to keep track of for myself, that I thought I'd put down here.




Kanji in General
- On'yomi are readings (pronunciations) of kanji that were borrowed from the Chinese. Kun'yomie readings are used from the Japanese language. There can be multiple of each for a kanji

- the hiragana tacked on to the end of kanji (verbs and adjectives and such) is called 'okurigana'

- kanji with attached okurigana typically (the claim is always) uses the kun'yomi pronunciation

- stand alone kanji usually use the kun'yomi reading

- compound kanji (two or more kanji making up a word) typically use the on'yomi reading

- some kanji have special readings that are ONLY used when it is a name

- most names use the kun'yomi reading

- numbers are almost always on'yomi readings, except for 4 and 7, which sometimes use the sun'

- the 人 counters are on'yomi but the other counters all are typically kun'yomi readings

Grammar (some from textfugu here)
- When sticking counters into a sentence in Japanese, you’d either write it as “[noun] [number] [counter]” or “[number] [counter] の [noun]” – for example, リンゴ一つ or 一つのリンゴ. If there’s a verb involved, you can write it as “[noun] を [number] [counter] [verb]” – リンゴを一つ食べた. ) (forum post: http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/onyomi-kunyomi-2/)



Verbs
- if the word ends in a hiragana う then it is almost always a verb
- if a verb also has a せ, it usually means that you are causing someone to do something (the meaning of the verb, that is).  An example was 見せる, which would be to cause someone to see something, or  rather, 'to show.'