漢字Kanji · in Nature & Elements
湖: lake
JLPT N212 strokesGrade 3Your ink: 白 Not met
氵 carries the meaning · 胡 gives the sound
12 strokes
Small seal · Qin Today
Small seal: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Two readings, and the words that use each
コko · on'yomi · in compounds
- 湖上こじょうon the lake
- 湖畔こはんlake shore
- 淡水湖たんすいこfreshwater lake
- 琵琶湖びわこLake Biwa
- ミシガン湖ミシガンこLake Michigan
みずうみmizuumi · kun'yomi · on its own
- 湖みずうみlake
Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0.
成り立ち
Where it comes from
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Imagine three raindrops falling—that's sanzui! Whenever you see these three dots on the left side of a kanji, think of water, liquids, or anything that flows.”
繋がり
Connections
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
Easy to confuse
The difference, side by side湖 lake · 氵
vs瑚 ancestral offering receptacle · 王In ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · hú
Same form: 湖 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).
- Simplified
- 湖 mainland China, Singapore
- Traditional
- 湖 Taiwan, Hong Kong
Pinyin hú most common reading
Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.
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