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A Brief History and Explanation of Kanji
Chinese characters, or kanji, are one of the three main writing systems
of the Japanese language. Kanji were borrowed from the Chinese language
in three waves, starting in the 5th century. One of the three common
Japanese alphabets, kanji are a set of ideographic symbols (symbols
that represent ideas) developed in China, and are extremely challenging,
but exciting to learn. This is mostly because there are well over
a thousand kanji symbols in everyday use in Japan, plus around another
thousand that are used more occasionally! These 2000 daily kanji are
known as joyo kanji.
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