元
Origin
| on’yomi | kun’yomi | Radicals |
|---|---|---|
| げん | もと | 元 |
Meaning: Origin
The radical and the kanji are the same! You’re in luck, today.
As long as you know your radicals, you’ll be good to move on to the reading, which isn’t as easy.
Reading: げん
What is your origin, in the grand scheme of things? What generation were you? I was Gen-Y, for example. You might be Gen-X, or something else.
Important thing is to think about your origin in terms of your generation, because that will help you to remember the reading of this kanji. Of course, the word “generation” and げん have a different “G” sound, but the goal is to get you close enough in your brain to pull out the actual memory of the correct reading, not to use the exact same sounds. If you get close enough to the spot where げん=元 is stored, you’ll be able to retrieve it a lot more easily.
Vocabulary
The on’yomi reading won’t come up on this page, but it will come up later. So, for now, we’ll just take a look at a couple of examples of the kun’yomi reading in action.
a 元（もと）＝ Origin, Source
- Meaning: The meaning is the same as the kanji.
- Reading; The reading is the kun’yomi reading. Think of the origin of the RAZR phone. It’s origin/source was もとrola.
a 元々（もともと）＝ Originally
- Combo: 元 (origin) + 々 (repeater kanji)
- Meaning: The 々 kanji just repeats the kanji that came before it, so this really is “source source” or “origin origin.” What’s the origin origin of something? That’s referring to where something originally came from.
- Reading: The reading is just the kun’yomi, twice.