Meaning & readings
emotion, feeling, sensation
On’yomi カン
Origin
The character 感 combines heart (心) at the bottom with 咸 at the top, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation "kan." The heart component is key to the meaning—in Japanese and Chinese thinking, the heart is the seat of emotions and feelings. By pairing the heart radical with a sound hint, the character expresses the idea of emotional responses or sensations that arise from the heart. This is a common pattern in kanji: using a meaningful component related to the concept plus a separate element that guides pronunciation.
Components
- 咸
- 心
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #233 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0611F