切
Cut
| on’yomi | kun’yomi | Radicals |
|---|---|---|
| せつ | き.る | 七 + 刀 |
Meaning: Cut
If you have seven swords, there’s only so much you can do with them. The main thing? Probably using them to cut something.
Take these seven swords and swing them around. Cut everything in your path, including yourself. Then, think about how dumb it was to try to use seven swords at once, and then feel the pain of the cut you gave yourself. Ouch, ouch ouch.
Reading: せつ
Then you decide to take the swords and divide them up amongst pairs of people. You split them into pairs, and give sets (せつ) to everyone who needs them in the village.
Just make sure you think about how you need to give them away in sets, and not anything else. This is the most important thing to think about in your head as you’re trying to establish the mnemonic for your kanji reading memory. It’s gotta be sets.
Vocabulary
Learn the meanings of these words before moving on… and try to learn the readings too, if you can.
a 切る（きる）＝ to cut
- Meaning: You can tell this is a verb because of the う sound on the end. So, this isn’t just “cut,” it’s “to cut.”
- Reading: What happens if you cut someone? You Kill (きる) them :(
a 切れる（きれる）＝ (something) is cut
- Meaning: Similar to the previous vocab, except this time you’re not doing the cutting. Something is just being cut.
- Reading: If you know the reading of 切る, you can know the reading of 切れる. Just remember the き part and the rest is hiragana.
a 大切（たいせつ）＝ important
- Combo: 大 (big) + 切 (cut)
- Meaning: If you think back to the days when people were cutting each other up, the big cut is the important cut.
- Reading: The reading is the on’yomi of each kanji, put together into a single vocab word.
a 切手（きって）＝ postage stamp
- Combo: 切 (cut) + 手 (hand)
- Meaning: The meaning of this word doesn’t make sense in Japanese. In Chinese, this means cut hand, but in Japanese it means stamp. Just imagine yourself cutting your hand while cutting out postage stamps.
- Reading: The reading is also strange. It’s the kun’yomi readings of both 切 and 手, put together. It’s an odd reading all around, so do your best to remember it now but if you can’t you can leave it to the study cards.