Meaning & readings
chirp, cry, bark, sound, ring, echo, honk
On’yomi メイ
Kun’yomi な.く、な.る、な.らす
Nanori なり、なる
Origin
This character combines a mouth (口) on the left with a bird (鳥) on the right to show a bird making sounds. The mouth represents the act of vocalization or sound production, while the bird identifies which animal is doing it. Together they picture the idea of a bird calling or chirping—the most natural and common sound-making behavior associated with birds. This visual pairing of mouth and creature eventually generalized to mean any kind of sound, cry, or noise-making.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 196
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1279 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+09CF4