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西 revisited

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The hilarity of learning kanji!

Slowly, I've been trying to learn the Japanese writing system. Today I learned the kanji for counting animals, pronounced "hiki". It looks like this:

To my mind, 匹 looks a fair bit like the kanji for "four":

Jog the innards up a tad and duplicate the top line and you've got the kanji for "west":

Which in turn looks like the kanji for "Rooster" (as in "Year of the Rooster"):

Add a string of dots to the left and you've got the kanji for "alcohol":

Happily, 酒 was one of the first kanji I learned in this country for some reason, and I tend not to confuse it with the others. It helps that stores don't tend to advertise "Rooster". Which is good because if they had a two for one sale you might see a sign saying 二酉匹.

P.S. I use "piki" for counting children. Tee hee.