Differentiating 石 from 右 – false friends

26 comments

1. You are going to love these two: 日 vs 曰

2. 文 and 丈

   夫 and 天

3. 持
   待
   I always forget which one is which whithout a context. (For example now as I wrote them down)

4. this 士 and this 土

5. 天夫夬夭矢失木本末未禾耒人欠

6. 午and牛

7. The stroke orders are different. You can see the clear difference in handwritten letter. People should learn Kanji with handwritten letters, not from the particular type of font.

8. I think false friends or cognates refer to a word spelled exactly the same way in two or more languages but convey totally different meanings. For example, in Mandarin, 机 (jī) is the simplified version of 機 (same pronunciation); ironically, both characters exist in Japanese, but the first one (机) means desk.

   Anyway, here are some incredibly tricky ones that came to mind:

   幻幼
   万方
   力九
   雷電
   董 薫
   互亙
   快怏
   颪嵐
   曽冒

9. 末未

10. 大 vs 太 vs 犬

    I still fuck up 矢 and 失 very regularly as singular kanji.

11. 休 and 体

    横 and 模

    村 and 材

    科 and 料

    因 and 困

    聞 間 問

12. They’re made up of different radicals. If it helps, 𠂇 means left hand and 石 is the chinese characters for a rock.

    友 means friend/companion and 又 is right hand.

13. 石 and 右 actually consist of different radicals and while they’re vaguely similar, 右 does *not* contain 石. The only component they have in common is 口 (mouth), at least according to Jisho. It also has nothing to do with on’yomi or kun’yomi readings as these are completely different for these two kanji. Worth taking a look in [jisho.org](https://jisho.org) and search for the kanji itself with the #kanji tag after the kanji in question.

    The other thing, 右 doesn’t mean “to the right”. It literally means “right”, as in 右手 (right arm), 右足 (right leg), 右側 (right side).

    There aren’t really “false friends” per se, but there is a ton of kanji which share a phonetic component and are extremely similar like the 義 family or the 沮 family.

14. Katakana vs kanji:

    エ 工
    オ 才
    カ 力
    タ 夕
    チ 千
    ニ 二
    ホ 木
    ロ 口
    ハ 八
    ネ 礻
    ー 一

15. The little tip at the top of most kanji are very important. Study radicals and it’ll clear some doubts (there are not too many of them, i recommend wanikani for it).

    Ishi (石) means stone and migi (右) means right.

16. 弟 　第

    地図　地区

    連体　連休

    酸素　酵素

17. A false friend is a word you mix up with one in your native language not two words within the same language

18. A fun pair is 感 and 惑

19. This is so funny. I literally looked up this exact thing today just because of 石 and 右

20. 人 bugs me a lot. We don’t write it this way in chinese, the right stroke touches the left stroke below the top and is shorter. But in print and on the computer it looks like both strokes are the same length and touch at the midpoint of the character.

    I still don’t know if japanese people write the kanji for 人 the same way as chinese people, or if they write like what we see in print.

21. some extremely hard ones: 祇、祗、衹、袛

22. This actually gets in the way big time at higher levels
    People downplay the effects of RTK but if you do it the intended way, stuff like ceases to exist.

    Knowing how to write them actually does a great deal more than just being able to write them

23. (a haiku for this post)

    it is hard to tell
    them apart…also i’m the
    69th upvote

    don’t give up🌟🌟🌟

24. For what its worth, the only time you really need to tell these kinds of false friends apart is during kanji tests.

    In real life, there’s always enough context that it is basically never confusing, even if the two words appear in the same sentence. Take this for example:

    > 石を右手に持つ

    You’re not going to think, “Hold the right in the stone hand?!” It’s obvious which one is “right” and which one is “stone.”

25. 働 動 just figured these out from practice
    特 持 待 working on these
    末 未 others have mentioned these

26. It’ll click the more you do it! The real pain to me with Kanji is remembering every time to use Dakuten.

    空 = そら

    青空 = あおぞら