Post kanji outside WK I could learn in literally 2 seconds

Criteria:

  • NOT in Wanikani
  • Reading matches reading of other known kanji due to same radical
  • Few radicals and/or repeating radicals

Super Exciting Bonus Round:

  • It’s easily visualise-able!
14 Likes

How about 仔 as in 仔牛 or 仔犬? (Read こ in both cases, it’s also common to replace it by 子)

11 Likes

Literally 2 seconds, I’m not sure, but how about:

麺 : めん noodle. 麦 (wheat) + a little 面 giving the onyomi
莫大 : ばくだい huge. 莫 is the phonetic component of a couple of kanji in wk read ばく or まく (漠, 膜)
洞窟 : どうくつ cavern. 窟 is 穴 (hole, pit) + 屈 giving the onyomi

11 Likes

I see 麺 a lot on shops.

3 Likes

I’m not sure if this matches the reading of other kanji but gyouza’s (餃子) ‘gyou’ (餃) is definitely a handy one to remember for restaurants. Also the kanji for a bunch of different fish.
鮪 - Tuna
鮭 - Salmon (often written as サーモン though)
鰤 - Buri (often written as ぶり)
鯛 - Tai
鯵 - Aji
Their readings are obviously just the name of the fish but they’re easily recognisable because the almost always have the fish radical on the left side of the kanji.

9 Likes

鮭 is already on WK, thus breaking the first rule of this thread :wink:

3 Likes

煎(せん) - Boil, Roast, Fry, Infuse (on its own) - It’s quite common to find on packaging for 煎餅(せんべい) senbei (rice crackers) and it is used in 煎茶(せんちゃ) sencha, a green tea. It’s very easy to remember the reading for too, since it’s 90% 前.

While it’s not exactly a kanji, 〆 is very useful to know. It is used in the word 締め切り(しめきり) deadline, as 〆切(しめきり).

8 Likes

噛, bite, chew
噛む (かむ) is a pretty common word, all the radicals are in WK too 口 and 歯. Onyomi is also こう but I don’t think it’s very common (or used at all? Jisho lists it but I can’t find any words with it haha)

6 Likes

曽, used in 木曽 = Kiso (Valley), a fairly popular place to visit. It’s got the same reading as the 噌 in 味噌, and 曽 is already taught as a radical.

4 Likes

The problem is there are dozens of fish kanji and most of them don’t have very obvious connections between name and kanji elements.

4 Likes

Ah, I reset from level 60 a while back and I can’t remember which kanji I’ve learnt from WK and which are from real life sightings aha. My bad!

I have this on my T-shirt. : )

Is there a rule on when you can/should use that specific kanji instead of 子? Or can you use it interchangeably with 子?

1 Like

Interesting thread, I have a good one for it, I think:
石鹸 (せっけん, soap)
The left Stone Kanji you could think of as representing your typical soap brick (I have no idea about the actual etymology though, does it refer to the salts maybe?).
For the second Kanji which is not on WK, the right side has 1. the “squid” component which gives it the けん reading you should have seen a bunch of times by now (険, 検, etc.) and 2. at least to my eyes, the left side really looks like a soap dispenser. :laughing: Take a look at a bigger font: 鹸 #kanji - Jisho.org

3 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.