How Kanji are constructed

[Eternalsonata1]

What They Never Told You About Kanji: 六書

[Snowflying]

What an interesting video about kanji; super easy to understand. Thanks for sharing!

[horusscope]

ありがとう ＜３
忘れてた、あのこと
すごい役に立って

[74nm41]

Thanks for this.

Just the other day a technical translator explained 形声 to me. I was surprised to learn something new that is so fundamental and useful.

[Axazel]

This came at a pivotal time for me–having just learned 利 and 仲！I noticed the pronunciation matched, but almost brushed it off as a fluke I’m looking forward to learning more kanji like this! Thanks a ton.

[bassan]

It’s a shame that Jisho doesn’t indicate which of these forms a kanji belongs to

[rmizuno]

Nice. I was actually just thinking about starting a thread to cover these same concepts, but that video summarizes it much better/clearer than I ever could

[AdrianaGenis]

Thanks! It’s so easy to understand!

[temporaryuser381]

ok. so at the end of the video 終 (しゅう/End) kanji is displayed as a 形声 (けいせい), I searched it in 広辞苑 (こうじえん/Koujien) and it shows this:

形声。「糸」＋音符「冬」

But according to Jisho.org, 冬 kanji does not have any reading which is pronounced as しゅう. So what’s going on here?

[Leebo]

Regardless of the readings of 冬, it’s undeniable that many kanji that contain that element have the onyomi of しゅう.

終
柊
蔠
螽
鼨

It seems like there are two types, and the ones that take the とう reading from 冬 tend to be written differently, where the second of the two lines below is written from the lower left to the upper right.

苳
疼
鉖
鼕

So it makes me wonder if there’s actually historically two items merged into that one modern form.

[acm2010]

I’m currently working on the Wanikani Phonetic-Semantic Composition userscript, it includes information like this in WK:

I didn’t changed much yet, it doesn’t work on the review page on Greasemonkey (just use Tampermonkey), for example, but it helps. I’m currently working on a better data source and brush the script up a bit.

The preview version is here:

WaniKani Phonetic-Semantic Composition Rebirth

1000×1000 11.8 KB

Wanikani Phonetic-Semantic Composition - Userscript by ruipgpinheiro (LordGravewish) THIS SCRIPT IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED BY ME.Look at this post for further information. Description: It seems that many kanji were created using a process called phonetic-semantic composition. This process joins two (or more) kanji (radicals), one (or more of them) usually called the bushu or dictionary section header establishes the meaning of the kanji, and another one, the phonetic component that establis…

[acm2010]

@Leebo

It seems like there are two types, and the ones that take the とう reading from 冬 tend to be written differently, where the second of the two lines below is written from the lower left to the upper right.

苳
疼
鉖
鼕

So it makes me wonder if there’s actually historically two items merged into that one modern form.

I didn’t find any authoritative info, but this 苳 means the same as 蕗 (giant butterbur, whatever this is), so the lower part maybe it is a simplification of 路. The reading doesn’t match then either, however. I looked up lots of kanji today and “multiple theories” happen very often. Maybe even the dictionaries cut some corners to give a short solution and this kanji is not a phonetic composition after all, or the reading changed for some reason.

http://www.kanjipedia.jp/kanji/0005166900