The Kanji of the year 2013!

[linguaholic]

The Kanji of the year 2013 // Now official

The Kanji of the year 2013 is 輪.

The kanji 輪 (wa) is the counter for wheels or circles. This kanji was selected as Tokyo was selected as the location for the olympic summer games in 2020 referring the the olympic symbol of the 5 rings. Also, the sound of the kanji is the same as the Kanji 和 (peace). Let´s make a peaceful circle".

[Daimashin]

It's fascninating how the Kanji and Chinese writings have so much similarities. If I'm not mistaken Kanji actually means Han's writings so I shouldn't be surprised.

[linguaholic]

Well, yes! Kanji refer back to the Chinese Han-Dynasty, when characters have been unified and the first character dictionary (the famous  Shuowen Jiezi) has been created. So basically, Kanji mean Han-Characters, as in 漢字 （in simplified script as used in mainland China = 汉字)

[Daimashin]

And because of Kanji I'm able to understand a lot of Japanese games and books. I'm glad that Kanji is still an important element in the Japanese language.

[linguaholic]

And because of Kanji I'm able to understand a lot of Japanese games and books. I'm glad that Kanji is still an important element in the Japanese language.

Hehe, me as well. Honestly, I think that Japanese without Kanji would not be so beautiful anymore :grin:

[gegegeno]

If anyone's seen a Japanese newspaper or news web site lately, you'll notice the word 五輪 (gorin - "five rings") meaning "Olympics come up extremely regularly in reference to the Tokyo Olympics (or OK, sometimes Sochi too if you read the sports section).

I'm not too surprised that it's been chosen as the Kanji of the year - it has no doubt jumped up a few places in the frequency rankings this year given how often it's coming up in the news.