It is well established that kanji is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to learning Japanese. They take a long time to memorize, and an even longer time to master. However, there are certain conventions in the language where it is actually the lack of kanji that is going to give us valuable information, and that is what we will be examining in this Bonus Topic.

Let’s dive straight into it.

Although it is not quite this simple, we can think of the three writing systems in Japanese broadly as the following.

Kanji - These carry meaning and can illustrate nuances.

Hiragana - These carry grammar, and act as a default webbing for the written language.

Katakana - These lend themselves to foreign words, or to emphatic words such as onomatopoeia.

As we mentioned in our Topic on すぎる, there is a difference between すぎる ‘to overdo’ and 過(す)ぎる ‘to pass’. Essentially, one is very literal, while the other has a broader nuance. Let’s take a look.

This is a concept that we can broadly apply to many patterns in the language, and the vast majority of them are grammatical. This is referred to as orthographic convention, which basically means ‘the standard way to write something’. When new grammatical patterns pop up in the language, it is even possible that they may drop their kanji eventually as well. This can be referred to as grammaticalization. What this allows the reader to do is determine the difference between standard vocabulary, and grammar.

Ample Examples

Let’s look at a few standard grammar patterns that often drop their kanji, and how this changes the meaning. You may be seeing some of these for the first time, but don’t worry, there is no need to memorize them right now. We will use them purely for illustrative purposes.

出(だ)す ‘to take out’, means ‘to do suddenly’ when used grammatically.

切(き)る ‘to cut’, means ‘to do completely’ when used grammatically.

見(み)る ‘to look’, means ‘to try’ when used grammatically.

So, next time you see an unfamiliar grammar structure, see if it originally comes from a kanji word! If it does, remember to compartmentalize it differently based on whether it is appearing with or without its kanji.