What is a symbol or visual thing that could represent empathy?

Help with learning japanese!(Topic: Kanji symbols) please answer all!?

• Hello everyone! I have a few questions about Kanji symbols in the japanese writing system: 1: Do kanji symbols represent sounds(Like the Katakana/Hiragana Alphabet) or whole words? 2: My friend once told me that they represent words. Assuming that this is true does that mean that kanji is an abbreviation when writing? Kinda like how we use "lol" or "brb". 3: I was once looking through my English-Japanese dictionary and noticed that some kanji have the same exact sounds despite being different symbols. For example I remember I saw a spelling of: (Some kanji symbol)(Hiragana of I) then I saw the word below it with (Another kanji symbol)(Hiragana of I) Note: The kanji symbol spelled out the same thing in both words Anyone know whats up with that? Since im here I might as well ask some of my other questions that I have of the japanese language: 4: What does "Desu" mean? Somebody told me it was like a verbal exclamation mark(Like Naruto's Dattebayo!) but others have told me that it has an actual meaning. 5: I only know the Hiragana at the moment and in the process of learning the Katakana alphabet. I once saw a symbol that was the Hiragana "A" but with the accent mark of ". Anyone know what that is? Sorry for the wall of text, thanks to anyone that can answer em all! :D

• Answer:

  Each kanji symbol represents an idea. Sometimes that idea forms a word on its own (for example "green") and sometimes multiple symbols come together to form a word (for example "weapon" is the combination of "fighting" and "tool"). It's not really an abbreviation like "lol", more like an extended alphabet for convenience of reading. Think of in English where you could spell out "two plus two equals four", but people normally would go with "2+2=4" which is shorter and easier to read. This is even more important in Japanese where there are no spaces between words. Kanji's pronunciation is rather eclectic. An individual character can be pronounced with one or more sounds/syllables, and many different characters may be pronounced the same way. There's no easy way around this problem. You'll just have to figure out the words from context. "Desu" is a form of the verb "to be". Examples "genki {desu}" means "[I] {am} fine" "kirei {desu}" means "[it] {is} pretty" (the subject in these sentences is omitted in Japanese, again, you have to figure it out from context) I don't know where you could have seen an A with ". Are you sure you didn't confuse it with a different letter?