I am very new. I am going through lessons and creating flash cards in Anki. I’ve been confused by the difference in meanings here vs. google translate/bing translate and I had accepted the rationale given for the different meanings, but…
申 = Say humbly?
Google/Bing translate it as Monkey. I’ve tried reverse translating and am not finding a way to have that mean say humbly… Should I worry?
Apparently on its own, this can be a word meaning Monkey, not the animal but the Chinese zodiac sign. The reading is the same as the usual word for monkey (さる) but that word will normally use the kanji 猿 and when this kanji is used it refers to the zodiac. In about 5 years of reading Japanese regularly I’ve never come across that usage, to give you an idea of how common it is.
Where you see this is in other words using it, primarily 申す, which is a humble verb for “to say”. You should be able to look at what words the kanji is used in through Wanikani to see what they’re teaching and get an idea of why the meaning was chosen.
Check jisho dictionary for a translation to say humbly.
Are you using anki flash cards for kanji or vocabulary? If you are doing the first, then using wanikani becomes redundant (although imho it’s best to use wanikani for the intended reason of studying kanji). If you are using anki for vocabulary then you will see that this kanji is used to say something humbly in Japanese for example 申し上げます、申し訳ございません I humbly say, I am very sorry respectively etc.
All this to say that since you are starting out, might I suggest that you download a deck with the first 5000 or so popular vocabulary vocabulary words and use wanikani to study kanji (it would also give you vocabulary words to better remember the kanji too).
Ok, but that is a translation of 申す not 申. I expect I’ll find out why I should think one implies the other, but I don’t know that yet.
Right now I remember everything, so I don’t need flash cards, but I expect I will pretty soon. The flash cards have what is in the wanikani lessons so far. So, it is kanji right now. Maybe there will be vocabulary coming up. I’m using Anki for flash cards, for when I am reviewing. I will probably include things from other sources. The wanikani website has lessons in addition to kanji. So, they serve different purposes.
Right now, I don’t have time to add on vocabulary like you have given as an example, but I will probably start adding that. Thanks.
It’s not only for 申す (and 申し～) but also for 申請, 申告. Making the meaning be say humbly may help remember vocabularies in this meaning cluster.
The meaning of (zodiac) sign of monkey might be good to know, but that’s not very helpful for most common vocabularies. Yet another rarer meaning cluster. (Unless you are very interested in astrology and historical events, but that’s a little advanced…)
It’s vocab that matters in the end. Kanji may be designated to mean anything… They are good as mnemonic keywords.
You shouldn’t worry. Translate would always consider them as vocab not Kanji, and certainly never in context if not given there.
btw, if you are curious – Kanjipedia in Google Translate
Here’s what Claude says, take it with a grain of salt:
The short answer is that 申 has three layers of meaning, each historically distinct, and the monkey connection is primarily phonetic — but with some intriguing circumstantial reinforcement, and possibly deeper phonological roots across language families.
In oracle bone script, 申 resembles a zigzagging lightning bolt, clearly depicting its connection to lightning. Reference: Learn the 130 pictographs that shaped the ancient China's world - Decode Mandarin Chinese . This is widely agreed upon by paleographers. Paleographers interpret the oracle script of 申 as a pictograph of a “lightning bolt”, graphically differentiated from 電 (diàn, “lightning; electricity”) by the addition of a cloud radical, and from 神 (shén, “spirit; deity”) by the addition of a worship radical. Reference: Chinese mythology: Shen (Chinese religion)
So 申 is the original form of both 電 and 神 — the lightning bolt was the ur-character, from which “electricity” and “spirit/god” later branched off as specialized derivatives. This makes sense culturally: lightning descending from the sky evokes both raw electrical power and divine presence.
This is where the story gets interesting, because the word shen meaning “to extend, stretch out” is a phonetic loan (jiǎjiè 假借) — the character was borrowed to write a completely different word that happened to sound similar, much as English speakers might write “too” for “two” in a pinch.
The “extend” sense derives from 引 (OC *linʔ, *lins, “to pull; to draw”) with a devoicing causative or iterative, according to Schuessler (2007). Reference: 申 - Wiktionary, the free dictionary . The visual logic of a lightning bolt extending/branching out across the sky may have helped the semantic borrowing feel natural, but the primary driver was phonological — shen (申) sounded like shen (伸, “to stretch”), so the character got borrowed.
The character 申 combined the “altar/worship radical” 礻in 神, and serves as a phonetic element in many related characters: 伸 “stretch”, 紳 “official’s sash”, 呻 “chant, drone”, and 砷 “arsenic”. Blogger The whole cluster is essentially a phonetic family around a root idea of pulling/extending.
The meaning “to state, to express, to report” follows naturally from “extend” — you extend/convey your words upward to a superior. This verb is still very common in formal/literary Chinese and Japanese (申し上げる mōshiageru, “to humbly say”).
Here is the crux of your question. The twelve Earthly Branches (子丑寅卯辰巳午未申酉戌亥) are an ancient ordinal system — essentially “slot 9 in a sequence of 12.” Archaeologists found oracle bone evidence of the complete sexagenary cycle dating back to around 1000 BCE, used by Shang rulers as a calendrical system. Reference: Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches: Origin and Charts . The branches originally had nothing inherently to do with animals.
The animal associations came later, and the scholarly consensus is that they were added as mnemonics — a concrete way for ordinary people to remember an abstract sequence. Some historians believe the zodiac animals were designed to help people remember the order of the Earthly Branches; there is a mnemonic that Chinese children learn even before the multiplication table that pairs the branches with the matching zodiac animals. Chinese New Year
So why the monkey specifically for slot 9 (申)?
The primary link is phonetic, but it runs deeper than just Chinese. Wiktionary’s entry on 申 notes something striking: for the association of 申 (shēn) with the monkey, compare Proto-Tai *liːŋᴬ (“monkey”), Proto-Hmongic *ʔlinᴬ (“monkey”), and Proto-Mienic *ʔbiŋᴬ (“monkey”). Wiktionary This suggests that the Old Chinese reconstruction of shen (something like *hlin) may have been phonologically close to words meaning “monkey” across several neighboring language families — implying the association may reflect genuine areal phonological overlap, not just an arbitrary mnemonic choice.
There is also a folk-cosmological rationale layered on top. The “extend” sense was used to denote the moon’s “extending” phase — i.e., a waxing half-moon with a concave edge — according to Smith (2010). Wiktionary And there is a saying that during the Shen hour (15:00–17:00), when the sun is westward, monkeys like to cry and jump around with their long arms extended, so people associate the Shen time with the monkey being most active. Reference: Chinese Zodiac Monkey -Years, Traits, Horoscope, Lucy Signs . This is probably post-hoc rationalization — a folk etymology constructed after the pairing was already established — but it shows how the “extending” meaning of 申 was narratively reconciled with monkeys by pointing to their outstretched limbs.
The order is fairly clear:
申 started as a picture of a forked lightning bolt. Because it sounded like the word shen “to stretch/extend,” it was borrowed for that verb and for the abstract ordinal “Branch 9.” The monkey entered much later, when the twelve branches were paired with animals as a mnemonic device — and the phonological fit between Old Chinese *hlin and neighboring languages’ words for “monkey” suggests the choice wasn’t purely arbitrary. The “stretching arms” story is almost certainly a later folk etymology that works backward from the coincidence of the pairings to construct a satisfying explanation.
Thanks for Kanjipedia. I’m not sure how to use it though. With google translate I can see instructions, but I’m still not sure.
It seems like it is more useful for me to remember “say humbly” than monkey astrological figure. So, I won’t worry. I added a note
The zodiac signs do come up here and there, for instance they’re used as placeholders to distinguish parties in contacts. 甲乙丙丁 are the first four signs and therefore can be used to enumerate 4 different things.
Of course 申 is the ninth sign and you’ll rarely go that far when drafting contracts… And knowing the zodiacal meaning of the characters is also not important for that usage.
