my first kanji

水 - water
火 - fire
彼 - he
彼女 - she
山 - mountain
木 - tree
森林 - forest
日本語 - Japanese (language)
日本人 - Japanese (person)

What a complex written language full of (sometimes hidden) meanings and history! Sometimes I think of it as the most complex secret code that is designed in order to be nearly impossible to break into. I am always impressed with the beautiful writing of my students and how swiftly they can write such complex symbols. But then I have also met Japanese people who are not all too fond of their own writing system and others yet who must practice in order to make them better. It truly is an entirely different form of written language than Romantic/Anglo languages. It's a whole different process in the mind and a whole different system of learning because of it (one has to be very dedicated and engaged from an early age to learn well)(you should see how easy learning to write English is for these kids--only 26 different letters and one of them is just a line: l and another is an o and another is a T and another is a y and another is a z...). I've gotten to know the roman alphabet very well while teaching it to all my favorite toddlers!

I should probably note that there are two readings of kanji, the on- and the kun- readings. So sometimes one symbol will be read completely differently based on if it stands alone or if it's with other kanji. The on-reading is for compound kanji and is adapted from the ancient Chinese pronunciation whereas the kun-reading is the pronunciation that is native to Japan. Kids generally learn kun- first then move on to on-. So 水 is "mizu" meaning water in its Japanese form but is sui (meaning something more like hydro or aqua) in its on-form. Just for those who don't know: there are two other kinds of "alphabets" that are used for writing Japanese. They are usually integrated with kanji unless the writing is for young kids or foreigners or if the words happen to be foreign words (one of the whole "alphabets" is used exclusively for foreign words and names).