牛

Cow

Meaning: Cow

The radical and the kanji for cow are exactly the same! That makes it easy to remember, so long as you know your radicals well enough.

The radicals are important to know, so make sure you’re studying them. They’ll come back again, you know!

Reading: ぎゅう

Have you ever heard of わぎゅう beef? That ぎゅう is this ぎゅう.

I hope you know what わぎゅう beef is, otherwise this will be a difficult one to learn.

Vocabulary

Let’s take a look at these (extremely tasty) common words. Mmm, makes me hungry, how about you? Learn the meaning of these words before moving on (and try to learn the readings too, but don’t spend a lot of time on that part yet). No on’yomi words quite yet, but we’ll start getting more of them as you learn more kanji.

a 牛（うし）＝　Cow

• Meaning: It’s the same as the kanji
• Reading: It’s the kun’yomi reading (because it’s a single kanji, alone). Spend a few moments trying to memorize うし, as it will help with the next word.

a 子牛（こうし）＝　Baby Cow, calf

• Combo: 子 (child) + 牛 (cow)
• Meaning: A child cow is a baby cow (aka a calf)
• Reading: The reading is the two kun’yomi readings of the kanji put together. I think you’ve probably noticed it by now, but 子 tends to favor the kun’yomi reading, even when it’s combo kanji vocab like the above one. If you have to guess which reading 子 uses, kun’yomi will win more often than not.

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