What does the "月" moon stand for?

The radical "moon" stands for meat?

Have you ever seen these kanji before?

胃　腸　臓

These characters are related to internal organs.
And you may have noticed, but these characters usually have "月 moon".
Why do these characters have "moon"?
I will explain it.

Contents

• The origins of "moon" and "meat"
• Moon or meat
• Practice sheet

The origins of "moon" and "meat"

First of all, let's check the origins of "moon" and "meat".

As I introduced in this post, the pictograph of the character "月 moon" represents the shape of the crescent moon.




The origin of the character "肉 meat", on the other hand, is a chunk of meat.




But as seen above, the Chinese seal script of these characters are very alike.


When written as a simple "moon" and "meat", both have different characters, "月" and "肉".
However, when these characters are used as a radical, these two characters look very similar.

Let me give you an example.
Take a look at the characters shown below.


"期" means "period". The right part of the character stands for "moon".
"肘" means "elbow". The left part of the character stands for "meat".
As you can see, "肉" becomes "月" when written as a radical.

I listed some kanji characters with the "月" that are usually learned in a Japanese elementary school.

Moon or meat.

kanji	yomi	moon or meat	meaning
朝	あさ asa	moon	morning
明	あか(るい) akarui	moon	bright
育	そだ(てる) sodateru	meat	to raise
期	き ki	moon	period
有	あ(る) aru	meat	have
勝	か(つ) katsu	boat*	to win
胃	い i	meat	stomach
腸	ちょう cho	meat	intestine
肥	ひ hi	meat	fat
胸	むね mune	meat	breast
臓	ぞう zou	meat	internal organs
腹	はら hara	meat	belly

According to the list, the kanji characters that have "meat" account for the majority of the kanji.
And they are roughly related to the body-parts or internal organs.

A Tip for remembering kanji
Kanji characters that have "月" on the right usually mean something related to time. (朝, 期, etc) Kanji characters that have "月" on the left or on the bottom usually mean something related to body or internal. (胃, 腸, 腹 etc)

I think you found an exception on the list.
The radical of the character "勝" is neither moon nor meat.
It is a boat.
In Chinese seal script, it is written as seen below.



The left part of this character stands for a boat.
It is a bit complicated, so I will skip the details of this character in this post for now.

But I want you to remember that the shape of the radical "月" has three meanings, "moon", "meat" and "boat".

download the practice sheet

I prepared practice sheet.
If you are interested, please download them.

How was hiragana established?

Long time ago in Japan we didn't have any kanji characters.
It is considered that it was around 500 A.D. that Chinese people introduced kanji to Japanese people.

However at that time, although men could use kanji, women were not allowed to use kanji.
Even though they wanted to send letters to their friends or someone they like, they were not able to do that because using kanji was prohibited.
So they thought about how they could send letters.


They decided to modify the kanji and create original characters from them.
It is speculated that the characters they used are the origins of hiragana.
Here are some examples how kanji changed into hiragana.







By the way, as you may know, there are 50 of hiragana but there used to be more.
Look at the pictures below. These are other versions of "か" and "の".




You can see these characters in Japanese old poetry "waka".
There are a lot more hiragana variations besides "か" and "の".
Depending on the preference or contexts, authors can choose proper characters for their poetries.

download the practice sheet

I prepared hiragana practice sheet.
If you are interested in practicing hiragana, please download them.

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