Learn Japanese Kanji - Chinese characters in the Japanese language

ひろこです。ひろこ here. Welcome to JapanesePod101.com Kanji Corner brought to you by JapanesePod101.com. Start speaking Japanese in minutes. Get your free lifetime account at JapanesePod101.com. It's a groove! Lesson 2, Getting to the Groove of Kanji. You did a great job learning the first lesson's kanji. It's time to expand on that and turn your one tree into a grove. Memorize the basic principle of drawing a one tree and you've got this kanji down. Now let's draw today's kanji. Here's one tree and the other tree. The meaning for this kanji is a grove of trees. Now we're going to have a trick for memorizing this kanji in just a minute but let's first look at the readings. Remember there are two readings in Japanese kanji. One is the on reading and the other one is the kun reading. Long story short, the on readings come from Chinese and the kun readings come from Japanese. The on reading for this kanji is にん and the kun reading for this kanji is はやし. And remember the trick that I was telling you about? Let's look at that now. Here you can see tree number one and tree number two. In ancient times, trees were thought to be the life givers. Considering that, one tree gave life to another tree. Then you have a grove of trees. Now let's look at how to draw this kanji. Pay attention to the stroke order. Tree one, one, two, three, four. You have to stop here. Five, six, seven, eight. Let's try one more time. Tree one, one, two, three, four. Tree two, five, six, seven, and eight. Now let's look at some sample words and phrases. The on reading for this kanji is りん. Here we have さんりん which means mountain woods. Next we have the kun reading. The kun reading for this kanji is はやし. Here we have はやしさん, Mr. Hayashi or Mrs. Hayashi. Since the Hayashi also represents prosperity, it began to be used as a common surname among the lords. Get the lesson notes for this kanji lesson at JapanesePod101.com. Visit us at JapanesePod101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account and start speaking Japanese in minutes. Thank you for watching. ありがとうございました。