So while studying japanese one step at a time, I came upon a magical article in the world of internets...

kunyomi くにょみ and kokuji 国字 uses ideogrammatic compounds, which basically means that characters are formed from smaller characters into one big character.

now my question is, what is the formula for finding out when to use a the regular character or to change it?
for instance, 榊 sakaki uses 木 ki and 神 kami. As you can see, 神 kept its original character, but 木 changed. 辻 tsuji keeps its characters from both 辶 and 十 on the other hand.

its kind of like simplified chinese. u don't use the old kanjis that were used 20, 30 years that u don't even see in the newspaper today. 榊 is a type of tree.
i don't see what ur trying to get at. there are no rules reading kanjis in kunyomi, you're overcomplicating things. it doesn't matter what type you use as long as it makes sence, but always choose the simplified version because its just hard to understand for everyday use.

there's alot anomalies though.. for example they both read もり:　杜、森

This post was edited by Chikin9gari on Aug 8 2012 01:13am

wouldnt 森 be consising of three trees mean forest, and the kanji wih two means grove? i know that kanji about a tree alwYs has the tree symbol in front, which simplifies it a bit. I'm trying to figure out if theres a way to organize which use the ideogram conjunctions and which could look similar yet mean something from a different topic. I went to get sake today and saw the river with three dashes inbetween which meant countryside. Kind of on the go, will edit in the kanji later as I did in my original post.

e: 榊 is a divine tree in the 神道。or so google tells me. Also I found out the funny pun and origin of the name Tokyo from Kyoto. Didnt know the name was so simple.

This post was edited by Arcolithe on Aug 8 2012 03:39am

lol organize? well kanjis are symbols and u can tell the meaning most of the time. if ur trying figure out how to read them in kunyomi, memorizing is obviously the fastest way. but once you've learned probably like 400~1000 kanjis u will get a hang of things.
u can tell the meaning by the symbols, not by the combinations. no native person does that. so basically 木　森林　they all consist tree so if it is on the leftside of a kanji like 杉（すぎ） then any japanese person will immediately know that it is a type of tree.
u can't advance suddenly jumping steps in kanji. if u know the basics it will gradually make sense, and judging from your level u will have no trouble.

/e kanjis aren't like you combine certain characters and make a new one, they have always been around since the beginning. there's no way working around.

This post was edited by Chikin9gari on Aug 8 2012 04:58am

Thanks! The character demonstration you explained is the exact combination formula I wanted. I didn't know that it had to be on the left side. By the way your English is superb. I wasn't talking about a way to make new charcters, but understand/learn the current. This is the first Altaic-root language I've attempted. A volcano would have fire before mountain though, do you know if there is a grammatical order? With the tree kanji, I figured the object would be first. Learning the
anguage is encouraging me to change my social research to Japanese etymology though, hah.

yeah sorry bout that.. i'm not a teacher either but i can help u get there. lol So basically all ones with さんずい characters（部首）http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%9A%E3%81%84
will have something to do with water e.g. 池、湯、沈む whoa looks like im going to have to some studying myself to.
But it's interesting how 湯means bath or hot water in japanese, and in Chinese it means soup. lol

This post was edited by Chikin9gari on Aug 8 2012 06:23am

there are a lo of oddities i haven't touchd yet. like ゆ on the bathhouse curtains.

i need to fully read and study the wikipedia article it seems, if I knew the word 会意文字 things would be a lot easier. at the moment i was just studying 助詞 they seem to be the most important things to learn first. Sorry for wasting your time like this! もしわけありません！

no problem man= I will try my best to answer your questions.

fairly realized something.

狗と犬わいしょ？

でもこんお漢字話ちょとだけいしょの字。

狐
猫
狗
they all have the same first character, why?

also, 鳥 is usually at the end of the kanji, instead of before.
鶏 for instance.
にわ means garden by itself though right?