My Five Favorite Non-Joyo Kanji

[@wondersuave]

I love the "sha sha sha" joke because I feel like my brain reads unfamiliar kanji like this all the time

[@YakaraOyuki]

me too, me too 😭

[@Ryan_gogaku]

There's an annual "new kanji" creation contest, and my personal favorite is one I've hoped would become a real kanji for a long time. It's 艹 and 皿, and it's meant to be read サラダ

[@flowerdolphin5648]

Sousaku Kanji contest, I love it too ❤ My personal favorite is 田甘 for chocolate, read as チョコレート

[@scriptingjapan]

@@Ryan_gogaku you can also write it as 皿だ.

[@joe_z]

My favourite is the one that created the word "depressive alcoholism" by replacing the two 木 components of 鬱 with 缶.

[@do811]

轟 is interesting because there is a vtuber named Todoroki Hajime and her intro saying is 「ぶんぶんぶん」as in a rumbling sound.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@do811 sounds like she's already Todoroiteiru rather than Hajime?

[@DragonRiderCVL]

@@scriptingjapanThe joke is that it's three Kuruma so she's just Hajime-ing her engine with a "vroom vroom vroom"

[@DragonRiderCVL]

she even explained this on stream lol, I don't remember the clip

[@kaerzokled]

​@@scriptingjapanlol i dig your 笑いのツボ

[@filipusandikawicaksana6822]

One of my favorite kanji is a shoutout to my university kouhai, Umar, whom we nicknamed "Eki", because obviously, 馬+R (尺) 😭😭🤣🤣

[@fariesz6786]

that is _so_ good though 🤍

[@SarahElisabethJoyal]

腥 in Chinese means a fishy smell (though is sometimes used in compounds to refer to unpleasant smells in general, ie 血腥 bloody smell or 土腥 earthy smell) Also found in the word 偷腥 (lit. 'steal fish') meaning to have an affair. Draw your own conclusions on that.

[@jerrylu7808]

FYI, 偷腥貓 is 泥棒猫

[@SarahElisabethJoyal]

@jerrylu7808 I am now going to thoroughly ponder the potential etymology of that

[@MellowPilsner]

Big fan of 淵. Although the fact that it's on the Jinmeiyo list perhaps implies that it's as well known for "deep" as it is for "abyss". Also, as a relatively new learner, let me tell you about the feeling of betrayal you feel when you realize how common non-jouyo Kanji are in popular Japanese media.

[@retrofizz727]

Yeah jouyou kanji are actually just a list of the official kanji you need to understand the newspaper or tv shows, but in practice for everything else they are not enough unfortunately so yeah as a learner I feel you 😅

[@scriptingjapan]

@@MellowPilsner that's a cool one, miserable to remember the stroke order though

[@justicedinosaur7302]

I still did find that learning the joyo kanji gave me incredible guessing powers for the readings of kanji I didn't know, which really speeds up the process of looking something up in a dictionary

[@villuna_]

OHHH so that's why all the body part words have the moon radical in them !!! i had no idea

[@scriptingjapan]

@@villuna_ not the moon radical! Not the moon radical!

[@FlorianBaumann]

​@@scriptingjapanAnd not the boat radical!

[@am-coconut456]

TIL 蠢 is another character that has very different meanings in chinese and japanese! it means "dumb" in chinese lol. although it can have the "squirming" meaning when used in a phrase ("蠢蠢欲动")

[@akumatsutranslations]

The "Sha sha sha" bit for 轟 reminds me of an old rakugo story about the reading of the name 平林. It starts with a boy being told to deliver a letter to "Hirabayashi", but he forgets the reading of the kanji, and others tell him readings like "Tairabayashi ka hirarin ka", "ichi hachi juu no moku moku", and "hitotsu to yattsu de tokkikki"

[@fariesz6786]

i like using the old (pre-sound change) on-yomi of 鴨 (given as アフ) to spell out 鴨楽 (アフラック) 🦆

[@KuraSourTakanHour]

It's things like the last Kanji which are the reason you can never be sure you've read a Japanese name correctly

[@FAIZAFEI]

Honestly the my least favourite part Japanese kanji as a traditional Chinese user, is definitely the simplification of the 肉 radical to as same as 月, honestly is not even simplification it just stroke changes, having the middle two stroke change from tilt down and tilt up to two horizontal stroke, it's not even difficult to write or differentiate or anything, and I personally think it has cause more problems than good, like the mentioned 腥 here for example.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@FAIZAFEI criticism of kanji on this channel is forbidden sorry 😐😞

[@DASmallWorlds]

Just a heads up kanji using the 肉 component has been written like 月 for a very long time, just look at old calligraphy (e.g. 王羲之's 肝)

[@KaedeMituki]

鏖 was originally a cauldron to cook food for a long period of time. It then became a metaphor for a long hard battle and then a battle that kills everyone.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@KaedeMituki out of curiosity I went and read a bunch of stuff and I'm not seeing that explanation. Do you have a source?

[@KaedeMituki]

@@scriptingjapan You may have to look for the Chinese origin and also the variant of the character, i.e. 䥝 and 鏕. The source was from 康煕字典.

[@Ranranranchwan]

鏖だぁぁぁぁ

[@St.Sogofhedgehogs]

瓩 in Chinese is used for kilowatt because 瓦 on its own is used as a transliteration for watt

[@scriptingjapan]

@@St.Sogofhedgehogs watt?

[@PeterLiuIsBeast]

瓦 is pronounced wa in Mandarin. Watt is phonetically translated as 瓦特 （wa te）。 But as a short-hand it is simplified to just the first character 瓦。Many other transliterated units get the same first character shorthand treatment.

[@nikoniko-nicomuffler]

漢字警察カワボすぎて草wwww

[@scriptingjapan]

娘を無料で声優として働かせました。

[@limjh日本語チャネル-y2m]

Speaking of metal, how did you miss 轢? It even looks dangerous! :)

[@scriptingjapan]

@@limjh日本語チャネル-y2m it's good but it's not my top five :(

[@Jotun184]

I had no idea 皆殺し and 生臭い had dedicated kanji. Doesn't even show up on the Microsoft IME it seems

[@maxf3336]

Great video! Learned a lot and some new kanji

[@conqueringwill8169]

轟 can’t be *that* illegal if it’s a jinmeiyō kanji, can it? perhaps it’s just a misdemeanor instead of a felony

[@nagaten6350]

Him saying it's illegal is a hyperbole haha It's just not commonly used, especially in official papers, because you're not expected to know how to read it unlike the 2,000 or so jōyō kanji that you learn in primary education.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@conqueringwill8169 You can use it for your name but you can't tell anyone what your name is if you do, it's a tricky legal space.

[@yorgunsamuray]

Here are the lesser used unit kanji. 瓸: hectogram 瓧: decagram 瓰: decigram 甅: centigram 瓱: miligram. This applies to other units as well. Meters 米, kilometers 粁, centimeters 糎, etc.

[@DASmallWorlds]

Bit of a shame you didn't mention the onyomi for 轟 as it comes up in words like 轟音 (ゴウオン) Also these are quite rare but 蠢動 and 蠢爾 (シュンドウ and シュンジ respectively) And of course 鏖戦 (オウセン) Don't forget about kango haha

[@sachi9730]

I think it's interesting to know "瓩" is a kilogram in Japanese, because this kanji in Chinese means a kilowatt.

[@nura8578]

Nue 鵺 being night bird feels weird

[@muskyteerchris]

My favorite one is 鼬 weasel

[@deadby15]

This is misleading. It’s never illegal to use any kanji. There are tons of books written in the Meiji era and they naturally don’t follow any rules introduced post-war. It’s just that the government, educational institutes, and the media refrain from using kanji that were deemed too obscure and complex by the post war government.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@deadby15 mate I don't know what you're talking about I almost got shot by the kanji keisatsu you saw it happen in the video I barely made it out alive

[@deadby15]

@@scriptingjapan Well... 常用漢字表にない漢字（表外字）を使用することは、「公用文では」固有名詞や 専門用語など特定の状況に限られています。 常用漢字表にない漢字を使用する際の注意点は次のとおりです。 専門用語などで読みにくい場合は、振り仮名を付けるなどの「配慮をする。」 「名前に使用することは」できません。 (Emphasis mine) I don't want to be that guy who utterly misses satire, but I just don't like those Grammar/Vocabulary police and have to urge everyone to push back.

[@scriptingjapan]

@@deadby15 I hate to break it to you but I think you might be one of these people who utterly misses satire

[@Kona4621]

What app are you using as a dictionary? It looks cool

[@scriptingjapan]

@Kona120 takoboto

[@makenicerhombus]

アメリカ人ですか？

[@scriptingjapan]

Yes desu

[@Smetanis]

I love this one “驫”. When 馬 is a horse, 驫 means, guess what? Yeah, MANY HORSES

[@scriptingjapan]

@@Smetanis it's so true sometimes there are three horses

[@SalameeQueijos]

Bonus fact: 鏖 can also be written as 37564

[@driesverhaag8955]

I'm personally a big fan of 鴛 but that's mainly because I'm just a huge fan of the animal itself, I think it has been approved for names since I've met someone with 鴛海 as their name which, being in an ocean of those birds, I think is a fucking dream come true

[@scriptingjapan]

@@driesverhaag8955 what do you call it when a perfectly happy couple laugh? 鴛鴦ふうふふふふふ

[@davebryantanady7482]

Three of my favourite non-Joyo are from a song lol, 翳 縋 恍. I'd like to see someone try and guess the song

[@murosekai]

I only know 翳 from “Brave Shine” by Aimer 「翳した刃の先に想いを重ねた祈りは時を超えて」 (writing from memory, so might be mistaken)