Biggest Realizations / Mind Blows You've Experienced Learning Japanese: Emoji means what?!?!

Well, one exception is 隣 (neighbor). The reason is that both 隣 and 鄰 exist with the same meaning, and 鄰 with the village radical did come first, but for whatever reason 隣 became standard in Japan.

The thing is that basically two different radicals got merged visually. But they retained their original meanings. The village / city meaning one came from this 邑. The one that means mounds / hills looked like this originally 阜.

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Shut the **** up.

Jesus Christ. This went over my head until this very moment.

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Ahh, interesting. Thanks for the insight!

I was driving down the road the other day and drove by an Asian supermarket and I was able to read a bunch of the kanji on the sign! That was so cool. Also finally was able to read the writing on my rice flavoring bags, lol. Not all of it, but some, and that is better than none.

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image

How I never realized this before…
How I never came across this word written in kanji before…

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When I listen to Japanese music and just understand what the singer mostly sings.

When I watch NHK TV or WakuWaku Japan TV and I just can read most of those kanji even if I don’t intend to read them.

When I remember in vivid the kanji writing with the correct stroke order on my mind when my favourite Japanese singer sings her songs.

For The Crabigators, THANK YOU!! :man_bowing: For all your hard works oh people behind Tofugu, THANK YOU!! :man_bowing: GANBATTE!!

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In Level 1 (I just started the course now) one such moment was when I learnt 3 persons were San Nin…was thinking where have I heard that before and it hit me in Naruto a group of 3 legendary warriors was called the Sanins. I always thought Sanin would mean like superman/woman or something. But turns now its just literally “3 persons”…kind of a letdown honestly :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

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It appears as though the Sannin in Naruto is written 三忍. That’s the にん in にんじゃ.

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Thank you!! For making me read 忍じゃ in Japanese. As I was reading the word in Hiragana and gradually realized what the word was I felt happy I could read it lol. Tiny achievements . And also for clarifying the different meaning. 3 ninjas isn’t all that much better than 3 “random persons” in a show where every other character is a ninja but it does make more sense. Japanese homonyms strike again :smiley:

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It wasn’t the right time to grip the connection

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Regardless of the original intent, it definitely worked as my mnemonic for “three people”! :smiley:

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I feel like an idiot for never realizing until now that “ecchi” is just the English pronunciation of the letter H (which is the first letter of “hentai”).

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Well it’s not that obvious. What do you mean I didn’t know it of course I did…

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Seeing 誰 written like this:
image
Or, you know, any instance of 隹 as image but I saw 誰 first

I’ve noticed I don’t usually seem to have much trouble with fonts, but for some reason that one threw me.

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lol that drop radical at the top right just screws everything up. Makes it look completely different to me.

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mind blown

Sometimes it helps trying to follow the stroke order of kanji you don’t recognize, and see if something familiar doesn’t pop out

切腹 - seppuku
腹切 - harakiri

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No,that font does make that look a little…off. 誰 - for me it’s the fact that the part to the right, which is the same bottom part of 曜, looks like each stroke is separated from the other so that イ and 主 together make 住 with an extra line rather than a lines-all-connected fancy grid. So my eye picks up on that イ especially (which is so big and tall???) and goes “that doesn’t look right! Unfamiliar kanji!”

So it’s still だれ、but not as we know it, not as we know it…

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It took me forever to understand よろしくお願いします as more than just a phrase people say just because. Honestly, I still approached it like that for a long time after learning よろしい and お願い as separate words. And then one day I just realized…

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