Difference between 牛 and 午

So it took me a while to differentiate them, especially since they look so similar. But I finally figured it out. 牛(cow) has a bit of stick sticking out from the top line. Kinda like the horns of an ox. 午(noon) does not. I just put it here in case any of you were having problems with the 2.

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You just wait for 官 (government) and 宮 (shrine) haha

It took me the longest time to realize that the only distinguishing feature was the position of the neck in the middle line in the B

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Oh gods, that was on my wall of shame for a while. :grimacing:

I finally remembered 午 when I imagined the radical rests above and makes it high noon while 牛 has a tip, and then I remembered cow tipping is a thing.

Weird way to remember it? Ye. But I remembered it ^^;

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I remembered it through “cows have horns” :smile:

I on the other hand didn’t even realize that they were kinda similar until you pointed it out :open_mouth: Maybe because they have a completely different stroke order and to me aren’t really the same thing :thinking:

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It eventually stuck, haha ~

This is such an easier way to remember it, but for whatever reason that didn’t stick in me head at all :sob:

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Yeah, same here. Never even crossed my mind they looked similar.

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These two were a nightmare in my reviews. Got it down after a while just through brute memorization though lol

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Wow, some of you must be blessed with some distant Japanese DNA or something

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Hah :sweat_smile: I think it’s just different things are difficult for different people. I mix up the readings for similar meaning kanji all the time, for example, even though they look completely different.

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Same, they baffle me every time :man_facepalming:

Mark me down for “not yet” 未 and “end” 末. Whoever thought of that is a psychopath.

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bonus fact:
the part sticking out the top was originally the cows head, the bit on the left was one of his horns, and he used to have another horn on the right. It was originally more or less an aerial view of a cow, with the central line forming the head through the tail, having horns at the top, and then two more lines through it to mark off the four legs. It lost two legs at some point in history as well (even earlier actually iirc).
bonus bonus fact:
the letter “A” in English is also modled off of an overhead view of a cow (the top of the A was the cows nose, and the two parts sticking out back were its horns). It was originally thought this letter came from the Phonecian alphabet, but modern scholarship leads further back. It was probably developed by Semitic people working the Egyptian mines (who adapted a phonetic script from Egyptian hieroglyps) sometime between the 15th and 19th Century B.C. Their letter “A” travelled to Phonecia, which then traveled to Greece (as Alpha) and then eventually ended up in the latin alphabet (which we use in English :slight_smile: )

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Message I sent to a friend earlier today:



fuck these two kanjis

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Maybe it would help if you drew them? 官 has 2 fewer strokes

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I thought of something similar, heh. It also helps that their onyomi are similar and they’re learned in the same level.

to me the first one always looked a bit unfinished with the first line being short so “it’s not yet the end” is the mnemonic i used (but by now I just know it without thinking).

I got this one down easily by remembering that “end” has the longer horizontal line at the end as opposed to the middle of the vertical line.

I was guessing which one is which, while I read this. And I was correct, luckily.

週末 is weekend, first you go through the five long week days (long bar first) to arrive at the two short weekend days (short bar second)