431

I find kanji fascinating. They aren’t an alphabet yet neither are they a vocabulary. They exist in the twilight zone in between.

I am able to place them into an alphabetical order—using Excel. But unless you know their pronunciation—one of several alternatives—plus some other unknown rule(s) about stroke order, radicals and the like, that’s utterly impossible.

Discrete kanji can be used as words. But they also form 2-, 3- and 4-kanji ‘words’ similar to German. Nevertheless, the total vocabulary of Japanese is only a fraction that of English. Hence the overuse—to our ears—of formulaic expressions.

Today: J5      

Total: J181 D117 G37 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1