言 (Say, Words) Kanji Discussion

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Comments from the kanji page for 言 (Say, Words) - Join the discussion by posting a comment!

言 - Say, Words


Grade: 2
Strokes: 7
JLPT Level: N4
Readings: ゲン, ゴン, い・う

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Why is the printed version (four horizontal strokes above the mouth) so different from the handwritten one (almost a pot lid / a drop and a one - above two more horizontal one?)

And why not say this one is composed of primes other than the mouth? Are the lines not primes here?

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Fonts and handwriting sometimes differ a crazy amount, such as in this kanji, due to stylistic or ease-of-reading. You’ll never see it written like how the font looks but more like how @Saori drew it in the box on the picture.

As for the lines not being primes, this is a choice we made for the one-off pictogram components. If we made each and every one of these kind of components into their own primes we’d have 10x the amount and most would only be used for one kanji. Good question though and something we can think about changing once we near the end of drawing these!