米
Rice
| on’yomi | kun’yomi | Radicals |
|---|---|---|
| べい | こめ | 米 |
Meaning: Rice
The rice radical and rice are the same in looks as well as and meaning.
Aren’t radicals nice? They make things so much easier… if you’ve been studying them.
Reading: べい
You’ve got tons of dry grains of rice. You have no idea what you’re going to do with it. Then, you come up with a solution. All this dry rice could go towards filling up the bay (べい), so you have more land to farm on!
In your mind, bulldoze the rice into the bay, watching it fill it up, then pile high. It’s not particularly good looking land, but it’ll do, and it’s already full of seeds, so that’s pretty good. The important thing is that you think you have way too much of the stuff, so the only way to get rid of it is to dump it in a large body of water, and that large body of water is a bay.
Vocabulary
Probably the most common way you’ll see 米 is in its kun’yomi form, though later on you’ll start seeing the on’yomi, so don’t forget it quite yet.
a 米（こめ）＝ Rice
- Meaning: Same as the kanji, though I should be clear this is mostly referring to dry rice, not so much the version you eat.
- Reading: The kun’yomi reading. You could think of the word “come” (こめ) and how you come to check the rice every day.
a 玄米（げんまい）＝ Brown Rice
- Combo: 玄 (mysterious) + 米 (rice)
- Meaning: You don’t actually know the kanji 玄 because it’s a kanji that’s not very useful (this is about the only good word you can learn with it right now). It’s a kanji with a lid covering poop. It’s a mystery how that poop got in there and covered up. So, mystery rice is brown rice. What else is brown? Poop.
- Reading: The on’yomi readings of the kanji. Don’t worry about this one a whole lot – it’s full of things you don’t know, including both on’yomi readings for both kanji (it’s an exception reading for 米 as well) – just use the study decks and learn this one slowly, over time.