A Learning System for Reading Kanji Based on the Relation between Pinyin and Chinese Reading of Kanji

Abstract

Recently, many foreign students come to Japan. Especially, the number of Chinese students is extremely large in Japan. It is easy for Chinese students to understand Japanese sentences with Kanji because the original characters of Kanji were mainly imported from China. However, it is hard to read Japanese sentences with Kanji because of the difference between Chinese and Japanese pronunciations. This is a serious problem for Chinese students in Japanese universities. Therefore, we derive a new rule of Chinese Pinyin notation and Chinese Reading of Kanji. Further, we construct a learning system for reading Kanji based on the derived rule of Pinyin and Chinese reading. The system is useful to improve the Japanese reading ability of Chinese students. The experiments prove the effectiveness of the proposed learning system for reading Kanji.