Guys what does this mean and read?

Summer job in Produce section of supermaket…it’s been bugging me for a month now. I could read the katakana but the kanji…it haunts me.

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Without looking anything up: Name of product; country of origin; chemicals the product has been doused with :nauseated_face:

Back in a mo…

名称 めいしょう name, title
原産国 げんさんこく origin-product-country i.e. country of origin
カビ mould (as in fungus)
防カビ剤 ぼうかびざい prevent-mould-drug, i.e. mould inhibitor, fungicide.

Also, 共和国 きょうわこく together-peace-country i.e. republic

…and I just did 共 きょう in this morning’s batch of lessons, so thanks for helping reinforce that one!

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Thank you! Win win then!

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One thing I love about kanji is the ability to figure out words you haven’t learned before. I’ve personally never seen 原産国 but the meaning and reading were both easy to guess, a quick search and sure enough …

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Have you tried looking them up using radical search? It takes some getting used to, but it’s a huge help when you’ve done so :slight_smile:

For example:

Using multi-radical: Go to a site like Jisho.org. Select radical search.

The first component is left-hand 阝. It’s not obvious from looking at it if this kanji has two strokes or three, so you may have to look at both. Turns out it’s three.
Once you’ve found it, you click on it, and two things will happen:

  1. All components that don’t appear together with 阝 in any kanji will become greyed out. This makes it easier to find the other component: ⽅

  2. A list of kanji using the component 阝 will appear near the top, ordered by the number of strokes. 防 has 3+4 strokes, and it’s quite easy to find it among the 7-stroke kanji.

Depending on the kanji, sometimes it will be easiest to enter all of the components. Other times, you’ll find it quickly after entering just the first one or two.

Using SKIP pattern: You can find this kanji using the exact same process as the one before. However, the left-hand component is a bit tricky; is it one component or two? (Actually, Jisho.org allows you to find it in multiple ways, but just go with me here.)

In cases like these, I prefer to use the SKIP pattern method; it allows you to identify the kanji by its structure and stroke count.

I like to use the iOS app imiwa. I select the pattern 1 (Left-Right), and then say I want a left component with 8 strokes. I scroll through the list of possible components until I get to 斉.

If there were more than one kanji with this left component, I’d get taken to a new list where I’d have to say I want a kanji with a 2-stroke right component (刂). As it turns out, though, 剤 is the only option, so it shows up already in the first list.
In fact, this is quite common for kanji where the first component has a high stroke count (as you can see in the image below). For this reason, I find SKIP search is often quite fast for complicated kanji.

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Damn that is nice! Looking force it myself might actually reinforce it in my head thanks you!!

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Thiabendazole. Sounds tasty.

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