郡, in the sense of “district” or “county”, used to be spelled 評.
Interestingly, this 評 also shares an on’yomi - ひょう - with 氷, although this is likely purely coincidental. 氷 has ひょう as a regular reading, both as its Go-on’yomi and as its Kan-on’yomi.
評, on the other hand, has it as a Kan’yō-on’yomi, suggesting that it is commonly accepted, but originally based on a corruption of a Middle Chinese borrowing. It shares this Kan’yō-on’yomi with its phonetic component, 平, and with another member of the same phonetic series, 苹.
都道府県 is the collective name for the four kinds of prefecture-level divisions in Japan:
One metropolis, 東京都
One dō, 北海道
Two urban prefectures, 京都府 and 大阪府
43 regular prefectures, each with the suffix 県
The English word metropolis comes from a Greek word that literally meant “mother city”, which Greek colonies would use to refer to the major city that they were associated with.
Does it take nine regular birds to make a single pretty pidgeon? No, it’s because when you see one pidgeon… there will be more. Pronounced きゅう or ク、of course. According to my kanji dictionary it genuinely also means “to gather”（あつめる・あつまる）or “to chill” - as in, やすんずる（安）。
While we’re on the topic, let’s connect that to: 胸
胸がすく - to feel relieved
すく feels strange at first, but if you know the kanji is 空く then it’s easier to remember!
After all those burdens, now your chest feels empty. Yeah you are relieved.
胸が悪い - sick
your chest feels bad now, yeah you’re sick
胸を冷やす - to be frightened
ever encounter smth that makes your chest cold? yeah that’s when you’re frightened
胸が騒ぐ - to feel uneasy
well your innocent chest is so noisy with feeling, you feel uneasy
One of the weirder vocab items for sakura is 桜肉 (horse meat).
It’s not entirely clear how this word came about, or what cherries have to do with horses, but it’s thought to perhaps be a euphemism from a time when eating some kinds of meat was forbidden.
Ah, how could I forget! Without knowing はと、the leap to むね probably makes much less sense.
Here’s a little fact, as a way of apologizing:
Did y’all know that doves / pidgeons are the messengers of “God of War” 八幡 Hachiman? This is why [for example] the well-known Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine (in Kamakura) depicts the character 八 as two doves on its name signs:
You might have noticed that the kun’yomi readings for 馬 - うま and ま (archaic) - are quite similar to on’yomi readings め and ば (m and b being closely related phonetically) and arguably even closer to the modern-day Mandarin mǎ. Similar words also show up in Korean (mal), Mongolian (morʹ), Manchu (morin) and Nivkh (murŋ).
It’s been suggested that all of these words may come from a common root, for example the theorized word *k-m-raŋ in (reconstructed) Proto-Sino-Tibetan or perhaps even some older, unidentified language.
What’s more, it’s been suggested that this word may also be related to the theorized word *márkos in (reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European, which is the suggested ancestor of the modern English word “mare”.
This character means salt, but my dictionaries list very few words with it, and most have no direct connection to salt. So it seems pretty obscure.
The modern Japanese kanji for salt is 塩, which seems completely unrelated. However, the traditional form of that character is 鹽, which contains 鹵 as an element in the top right.
You can just barely see it on this receipt for some delicious Taiwanese fried chicken nuggets:
I grew up hearing stories about filing and filling old horse’s teeth to make the horses appear younger. I find it funny that this kanji can be used in several ways to denote age:
歯 noun, one’s age, common word
歯 noun, age in years
Some sources say that this character actually gets its meaning from the practice of counting a cow’s teeth to determine its age.
The part on the right is 令, which thankfully is mostly accurate at indicating the reading れい in Japanese.
I find it interesting that 令 has two quite different appearances depending on font or writing style, both on its own and as part of more complex characters (including 齢).
Here’s another kanji with the same phonetic part:
零
Just a note of caution… I’m not so sure I would call it a common word. Well, at least not without caveats. It’s an old-fashioned word. You shouldn’t use it in conversation, but you may see it in stories.
For instance, I was reading Dune in Japanese, and it was used by a very old character who uses stiff expressions.
Nothing is more annoying than being ordered to spillrainwater. For one thing, what purpose could it poosibly serve, except to get your shoes and socks wet?
Something new coming out of your mouth? Hopefully it’s a good story (like a はなし or ものがたり).
I couldn’t find any on’yomi for this one - though I’d wager シン - but I did see another just like it: 咄. For example, either one can be used in the word 噺家・咄家（はなしか）a [professional] comic storyteller. Also, if something is new to you, you can apparently say it’s 耳新しい！
The kanji 取 (“take”) shows a hand reaching for what appears to be an ear.
It has been suggested that this refers to holding an animal by the ear to avoid getting bitten. This is also presumably whence we get the word 牛耳る (“to control, to have under one’s thumb”) and the expression 牛耳を執る (“to control, to be the leader”).
Others suggest that it could refer to the practice of cutting the left ear off a game animal or a fallen enemy as a trophy.
However, it’s worth noting that in older forms of Chinese, 耳 could also mean “handle” or “knob”, so it could simply describe somebody grabbing something by the handle.
噺 is a kokuji, so any on’yomi would have to be kan’yō-on, or borrowed back and forth
In ancient times, four was denoted by something like this:
But the Japanese language has another very uncommon kanji that also refers to four. 肆. My IME does bring it up with the し spelling. Apparently it is used in legal documents.
Also, it may mean a shop 肆, and my IME does bring this kanji up with the spelling みせ.
This game is so fun. Thank you all for participating. It really feels worth while to investigate a kanji in depth occasionally.
I’ve previously talked about phonetic components that match up exactly, but this is a case where we aren’t so lucky.
店 has an 音読み of てん, but its phonetic component is 占, which has the 音読み of せん. They’re similar, but not identical.
(The two characters also appear to have different pronunciations in modern Chinese, so in this case it’s not a Japan-specific distinction.)
Anyway, 店 (store, shop) makes me think of the word 店員 (shop staff), which is an example of how real pronunciation doesn’t precisely match what you might expect from just reading the kana out of your textbook or dictionary.
A good reminder that even though modern Japanese kana spelling is pretty clean, using languages in the real world is always more complicated than you might hope.
占 (“divination, fortune-telling”) appears to consist of the components 卜 (“divination”; represents a crack in a turtle shell or plastron used for pyromancy) and 口 (“mouth”), suggesting the idea of somebody communicating the results of their divination. Seeley-Henshall and Yellow Bridge both support this interpretation.
An alternative interpretation is that the 口 was originally not a mouth but a receptacle, but according to Seeley-Henshall this is a much less common interpretation.
Kanji portraits also suggests divination+mouth as the primary interpretation, but suggests an alternative interpretation would be that the 口 is an area that a divinity descends to; hence the alternative meaning of 占 being “occupy”.
However, Seeley-Henshall suggests that this meaning is unrelated to the kanji, and that the meaning of “occupy” is the result of a phonetic loan.
In oracle bone script, 占 sometimes appears inside an enclosure.
One resource I looked at (Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters) suggested that this enclosed form of 占 is an abbreviated form of 貞, which is also connected to divination. Not sure how much stock I put in that interpretation, in part because I’m not sure how reliable that resource is and in part because the characters appear quite different in oracle bone script (for example, 卜 is present in every inscription of 占 on Sinica, but only one inscription for 貞) and they were apparently pronounced differently in Middle Chinese.
Interestingly, no resource I’ve looked at has any bronzeware inscriptions for 占.
Shellfish is not a super-useful kanji on its own, but it shows up very often as a component in more complex kanji.
Part of this is that people in China used shellfish as currency at one point, so as a result the character for shellfish shows up in many characters relating to wealth or commerce.
One obvious example is 買 (buy). But did you know that shellfish also appear in the traditional form of 売 (sell), which is 賣?
Here are some more kanji that contain 貝 in their traditional 旧字体 form, but not their modern Japanese 新字体 form:
円 (yen, circle) was once 圓
宝 (treasure) was once 寶
価 (price, value) was once 價
桜 (sakura) was once 櫻
Speaking of character simplification, here’s the next kanji:
弁
Pronounced きゅう or ク、of course. According to my kanji dictionary it genuinely also means “to gather”（あつめる・あつまる）or “to chill” - as in, やすんずる（安）。
