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Help identifying kanji found in magazine

RichardP

Registered
16 Feb 2018
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I have a collection of Japanese magazines and books that I use to aid my learning. I am usually able to find the kanji without issue but this one is a doozie. The images are huge so I don't want to embed them as they'll take up the whole screen:

Image 1
Image 2

I've tried using the Google Translate app's kanji drawing capability. Usually, it will find me the kanji, then I can copy/paste the typed character into jisho.org. However, this one is so complex and kind of hard to identify every stroke against the background in the magazine, so I think I'm making mistakes drawing it that prevent the app from correctly identifying it.

I also tried using jisho.org's radical search to no avail. I'm still quite rusty identifying radicals in 10+ stroke kanji.

I even poured over every kanji listed in Wikipedia's kanji page between 14 and 16 strokes several times and could not find it.

I was hoping someone here might be able to identify it and just type it into the forum so I can plug it into jisho.org and go from there :)

Thanks!
-Richard
 
I even poured over every kanji listed in Wikipedia's kanji page between 14 and 16 strokes several times and could not find it.

Probably because it has 18 strokes.....

How are you going about learning kanji?
 

That's the one! Thank you so much!

Probably because it has 18 strokes.....

How are you going about learning kanji?

Ahh, good to know. The more complex it is, the less accurate my stroke counts. I can generally count strokes well up to around 12 stroke then some details can be too small for me to see in kanji like that one (especially depending on font). I initially learned through an online textbook called TextFugu and know about 200 kanjis' meaning, on'yomi and kun'yomi by heart. However, it taught in order of stroke count, so all of those 200 span 1-6 stroke. So I've been complimenting this with learning 1 sentence per day via translating a page in a magazine I have. I identify and look up what I don't know in the sentence, learn the individual words, then reread it all day until I know them well. The next day I learn the next sentence and all words in it and have to read the first two all the way through. And so on...every day needing to read all the up to where I am.
 
The character appearing after it is rarely used in any context other than the two-character word 犠牲. Looking up that second character might have helped you, too, in identifying the first.

And it's "pored over", not "poured over".

Probably because it has 18 strokes.....

Actually, 17.
 
I would suggest that you set aside your scattergun approach for the time being and learn at least the 教育漢字 with some good materials.

What are you doing about learning the Japanese language itself?

EDIT:

Seventeen strokes is correct. Thanks for the correction.
 
Concerning components: 犠 is made up from 牛, 羊 and 我. Especially 牛 is easy to recognize and allows you to find the kanji on Jisho rather quickly - clicking it results in only 34 characters with >= 10 strokes, out of which most are displayed in light blue (meaning they're obscure and can in all likelihood be ignored).

That said, joadbres also makes a good point: 牲 is even easier to find (牛 + 生) and is in practice really only used in this particular word (just like 犠). The trick is to search Jisho for "*牲*" to make it return words that include the character, rather than "牲" which only returns words that start with it.
 
I would suggest that you set aside your scattergun approach for the time being and learn at least the 教育漢字 with some good materials.

What are you doing about learning the Japanese language itself?

I combine a few materials - I regularly do my lessons on the mobile phone app DuoLingo. I also have a 1 hr drive to and from work and listen to audio lessons both ways. I learned the majority of what I know from the online textbook TextFugu which integrates kanji learning into the lessons and is accompanied by a flash card program that syncs up with where you are in the textbook. Now I'm also progressing through the textbook Genki that my friend loaned me. Naturally, I also watch Japanese shows online with subtitles and try to pick out what I know. I'll also set aside a few hours now and then to watch something with subtitles off and see what I can make out.

Edit: I've been studying for a few years, but my gf is also now learning and has been studying for about 6 months and we speak whatever we can in daily life. When in doubt of what we're saying, we'll say it to Google Translate after to see if it picks up what we were trying to say.
 
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