Lesson 10 of 12
Kanji Unit 10 — eat, drink, read, say
about 9 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Read the everyday verbs written with a kanji stem.
- Recognise 言 inside a character and say what it suggests.
Words this lesson teaches
- 食
- eat, food
- 飲
- drink
- 読
- read
- 書
- write
- 話
- speak, a story
- 買
- buy
- 見
- see, look
- 聞
- hear, listen, ask
- 言
- say, word
What it explains
A radical narrows the field; it does not give the answer
Seeing 言 tells you a character is about language. It does not tell you which language word, and it never tells you the reading. That is still worth a great deal: meeting an unknown character on a menu and knowing it is about speech rather than food removes most of the wrong guesses. Treat a radical as the first half of an answer and you will use it correctly.
見る and 見える are not the same verb
見る is to look at something on purpose; 見える is for something being visible whether you meant it or not. The character is identical and the kana tail carries the whole difference — the same trick as 行きます and 行った in unit 9. This is worth knowing now because it is the pattern behind a great many pairs you will meet later, and it is invisible if you only read the kanji.