字
Letter
| on’yomi | kun’yomi | Radicals |
|---|---|---|
| じ | n/i | 宀 + 子 |
Meaning: Letter
You walk up to a child wearing a helmet on his head. As you come closer, you see what he’s working on. He has hundreds of letters (of the alphabet) in front of him, and he’s rearranging them into different equations. Absolutely crazy, this one is. He’s wearing a helmet because he doesn’t want the aliens to know his thoughts, and know the secret codes and equations he’s creating with the letters.
Reading: じ
As you’re watching the kid arrange all his letters around, you see one letter in particular standing out… “A-B-C-D-E-F-G…” he says, as he puts the G (じ) aside. You ask him why he doesn’t like the letter “G.” He replies: “G is for God. And God is actually aliens from the past… we must hide this letter from him.”
Imagine an alien God looking down on the kid, shaking his head either in approval or disappointment. You choose – whichever you think would be more interesting and memorable to you. The alien version of God should be pretty memorable enough to remember G is for God, though.
Vocabulary
Learn the meanings of these kanji before moving on. Also, do your best on readings too – the more you know now, the fewer you have to learn later. The 字 character doesn’t have an important kun’yomi either, which will make the vocab that much easier as long as you’ve been studying and reviewing.
a 字（じ）＝ Character Or Letter (i.e. a Kanji, the letter “A”, etc.)
- Meaning: Same as the kanji.
- Reading: Same as the on’yomi.
a 太字（ふとじ）＝ Bold Lettering
- Combo: 太 (fat) + 字 (character)
- Meaning: A fat character is what? A bold letter.
- Reading: The reading is the kun’yomi for 太 and the on’yomi for 字. This is probably because this vocab word is like two words put together to make one.
a 文字（もじ）＝ Letters
- Combo: 文 (writing) + 字 (character)
- Meaning: Writing characters are letters – can be all kinds of letters, like “A”, “あ” and so on.
- Reading: The on’yomi readings, though the も is shortened from もん in 文.
a 一文字（いちもんじ）＝ A Straight Line
- Combo: 一 (one) + 文 (writing) + 字 (character)
- Meaning: One writing character is like one movement with the brush. A straight line.
- Reading: The on’yomi readings of the kanji.
a 大文字（おおもじ）＝ CAPITAL LETTERS
- Combo: 大 (big) + 文字 (letters)
- Meaning: Big letters are CAPITAL LETTERS
- Reading: The 大 is actually the kun’yomi reading, which is kind of strange. 文字 is the same as the word 文字, which you just learned. You’ll have to just remember the 大 part as an exception.
a 小文字（こもじ）＝ lowercase letters / small letters
- Combo: 小 (small) + 文字 (letters)
- Meaning: The small letters are the opposite of the big letters. That would be lowercase.
- Reading: The reading is the on’yomi readings of the individual kanji, unlike 大文字 which just wants to cause trouble.
a 名字（みょうじ）＝ Surname
- Combo: 名 (name) + 字 (characters/letters)
- Meaning: This is your last name – it’s the name that has letters (the kanji) associated with it, because it’s what you stamp things with, etc., etc., It’s just the more official name, which is your last name, so that’s how you can remember it.
- Reading: The on’yomi readings of the kanji.
Notes
If you see this kanji, it has to do with some kind of letters or characters (the written kind, not the kind you send in the mail or see on TV). If you look at a lot of these words, you’ll see that a lot of them make a ton of sense. I bet you could figure out a lot of these without even looking at the answers, that’s how nicely everything works out here.