This is a blog about 漢字. What is or are 漢字? Literally the word 漢字 translates as “Chinese character”—or plural “Chinese characters”. Synonyms are “sinogram(s)’, “sinograph(s)”, “CJK character(s)” and more. The first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia article on 漢字 are just fine as an introduction if you need a bit of historical and linguistic background information.
Currently I’m moving blog articles from the blog’s old place to here. Quite a few articles seem to need updating, so it might take a while.
The blog originally started as a place to put updates on Kenneth G. Henshall’s book A guide to remembering Japanese characters in the style of his book with additional explanation and references where necessary. I did this because I had enjoyed his book while studying Japanese. I think Henshall did a great job (1) given the focus of his book: use the historical and graphical development of Chinese characters to learn students how to analyse and remember them (2) using the Japanese resources available to him at that time (1988).
However, his book didn’t treat all the Chinese characters that I came across in my reading. Also, the research into the development of Chinese characters underwent remarkable progress. As a result, I noticed already during my studies that certain entries in Henshall’s book were invalidated by new knowledge. This triggered in me curiosity regarding the new developments, which eventually made me more or less abandon the blog for a more ambitious project (though still just a hobby) that has its own website here.
Even now, much later, I find that writing entries in the style of Henshall’s book is entertaining, at least for me. It brings back memories of a fun time studying. Perhaps someone with the same background of me will enjoy those pieces as well, otherwise they will probably be puzzling artifacts at best (I don’t care much, it’s just a hobby that I like for its own sake).
When I became more involved with the most recent research I abandoned the Henshall updates. I kept the blog somewhat alive to post more or less random scribbles about things that I came across. Maybe some of those posts can be salvaged. Some of them I already unpublished.
For more resources and information, please visit my website characterdb.ketmia.net. Some of the pages require username password (use guest and guest).