quick question

[mary222]

maybe i didnt get things right but i believe that if you were to represent a word by kanji that had more then one symbol you should present them one on top of another but i have notice a lot of them side to side... what is the correct way

thanks

[doogfood]

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly but many kanji's are composed of multiple kanji's, where they may be placed one on top of another, side to side, and sometimes a mix of it, so there is no "correct way". Some of the reasoning for the kanji to compose multiple kanji's may make sense if you look at the meanings of the kanji's.

Few examples are:
枝 - "Branch" composed of 2 kanji's, 木 for tree, 支 for suppport
森 - "Woods"　composed of 3 kanji's for tree, which is 木
鰯 - "Sardine" composed of 2 kanjis, 魚 for fish and 弱 for weak
奇　　not used in isolation but when used in combination with other kanji's, this may represent "miracle, strange, etc" composed of 2 kanji's, 大 for big and 可 for possible

(btw the meaning of the kanji's I gave in the example may not be the most accurate since many kanji's can be interpreted and used in multiple ways so don't be too concerned about them)

[mary222]

all right tks

[vapor]

You are speaking to the correct placement of kanji? Whether it should be up and down, or left/right?

Like doogfood mentioned, there is no right or wrong way....

In my work environment, I have my creative agency prepare brochures, letters, etc. in Japanese, and on the same document, we may have some things going up and down, while on the back side, they would be left to right!

vapor

[smoothsake]

I think vapor and doogfood are talking about two different things.

Doogfood is talking about the composition of a single kanji and how it can be broken up into smaller kanji. This was the ingenious idea of the Chinese to not create a new kanji for words or meanings that could otherwise be the combination of two or more kanji. His examples above are good to see the application of this.

Vapor is talking about, I think, the notion that in Eastern writing books are usually read from right to left, top to bottom. In this case, you would read a sentence beginning on the right page first, right most sentence, top to bottom. This is the traditional method but like all things this isn't the rule today and some Eastern writing is now done using Western convention from left to right.

[doogfood]

Well if it's about the direction sentences are written in, then in traditional writing, be it for essays for schools or Japanese books/novels, the writing is written from top to bottom, starting from the right and ending on the left. So books, periodicals, comics are all read from the right page to the left. It's annoying handwriting essays from top to bottom using grid like papers because each letters and punctuations take up a box and it feels awfully awkward unless you're used to it.

Trivial fact related to this is that many Japanese comics like the famous Doraemon has been published (some are bootleg stuff) by printing the pictures oppositely so that the texts can be written from left to right in their own language.

[theblueeyedninja]

Originally Posted by doogfood

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly but many kanji's are composed of multiple kanji's, where they may be placed one on top of another, side to side, and sometimes a mix of it, so there is no "correct way". Some of the reasoning for the kanji to compose multiple kanji's may make sense if you look at the meanings of the kanji's.

Few examples are:
枝 - "Branch" composed of 2 kanji's, 木 for tree, 支 for suppport
森 - "Woods"　composed of 3 kanji's for tree, which is 木
鰯 - "Sardine" composed of 2 kanjis, 魚 for fish and 弱 for weak
奇　　not used in isolation but when used in combination with other kanji's, this may represent "miracle, strange, etc" composed of 2 kanji's, 大 for big and 可 for possible

(btw the meaning of the kanji's I gave in the example may not be the most accurate since many kanji's can be interpreted and used in multiple ways so don't be too concerned about them)

i think u are explaining "radicals", those cant be rearranged up or down

[doogfood]

Originally Posted by theblueeyedninja

i think u are explaining "radicals", those cant be rearranged up or down

yeah smoothsake pointed that out. Also I only gave those examples because the radicals are a kanji by itself (easier to explain this way), and yes, you are correct that radicals cannot be rearranged up or down within a kanji but I didn't mention that it can.