“When a kanji ends with an “う” sound (like る, for this one), it’s usually going to be a verb. When the vocab is a kanji + okurigana ending in this “う” sound, it’s often going to be the verb form of that kanji. So in this case, the kanji 入 is enter. The vocab 入る is to enter. Just the verb version of the kanji.”
So is the kanji 入 supposed to be the noun form of the verb “enter”. If so, shouldn’t it be “entrance”? Or is it something between that doesn’t translate well into English grammar?
I think this is a case of WaniKani dumbing down their explanation so much that it became confusing.
A kanji by itself can be a word with its own meaning. In this case, 入 isn’t really used on its own. It’s just a concept, in this case the concept being “enter”. This kanji can be used in many words, one of which does mean “entrance” (入口).
So individual kanji aren’t necessarily words. They can be, but not necessarily. It’s kind of like “intra-” or “inter-” in English, where we have these borrowed prefixes from Latin or something that form parts of words, and are standalone concepts in an abstract sense, but aren’t a whole word.
So I guess this what they meant in the book I read when saying kanji describe concepts like “fire” or “heaven” that don’t always transcribe well to English, here the meaning of 入 being literally the concept of entering something and not the action itself.
What does “starting” state in your sentence? Or what function does “ing” do after “start” verb? That you were typing while Potema was also typing, or you typed first, then Potema started typing long after you, or neither, it’s something that native speaker commonly use?
@zioming That’s right. Kanji are just concepts and so they don’t have a part of speech. Words have one (or sometimes more than one) part of speech, which impact how they can be used in a sentence.
