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Most of the time (In Japanese, at least), the Kanji do not map to meaning per-se, but to roots. For example, in English, we have words like "lap-top", "uni-cycl

Most of the time (In Japanese, at least), the Kanji do not map to meaning per-se, but to roots. For example, in English, we have words like "lap-top", "uni-cycle", "roof-top", "blue-berry", that clearly have multiple semantic components within them. In these cases, in Japanese, the words would be written with the kanji for their roots. In more linguistic terms, the kanjis often refer to morphemes, not ideas. There are some exceptions. For example, in Japanese, today (kyou) is written as "今日”, even though it is a single morpheme. In cases such as this the kanji are used for their meanings. In cases such as this, is is not clear how much the kanji actually help, because the sementic information provided is precisly the information that you would get from knowing the roots, and you (or rather a native speaker) does not have to be taught roots (or at least those roots that still have semantic meaning).

Nadya 10y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by separating "meaning" from "roots". To myself they are one in the same (the root word or a meaning of the root "word", there is no difference in my opinion). Could you provide some examples of what you mean? Maybe I'm thinking too literally or you meant "root" (as in radicals) different from "root" (as in root word). 「自転車」, 「図書館」, 「作家」, 「日光」,「棋士」. You even have witty ones like 「親子丼」. Just have to be careful about ones like 「多少」. The reason I would say not to rely on such literal meanings to define words is because some require some stretch of the imagination like「子宮」 and my rule of thumb is if it it requires a stretch of the imagination it's because it doesn't actually mean that. But literal translations can still be useful as mnemonics to learn new words/kanji. Like a pair of training wheels that eventually get removed.

Nadya 10y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by separating "meaning" from "roots". To myself they are one in the same (the root word or a meaning of the root "word", there is no difference in my opinion). Could you provide some examples of what you mean? Maybe I'm thinking too literally or you meant "root" (as in radicals) different from "root" (as in root word). 「自転車」, 「図書館」, 「作家」, 「日光」,「棋士」. You even have witty ones like 「親子丼」. Just have to be careful about ones like 「多少」. The reason I would say not to rely on such literal meanings to define words is because some require some stretch of the imagination like「子宮」 and my rule of thumb is if it it requires a stretch of the imagination it's because it doesn't actually mean that. But literal translations can still be useful as mnemonics to learn new words/kanji. Like a pair of training wheels that eventually get removed.