In today’s Similar Kanji series we look at – 午 (noon) versus 牛 (cow).

• 午 – Noon, seventh sign of Chinese zodiac, sign of the horse
• 牛 – Cow

I have no special memory ideas for 午 (noon), it’s just one of the kanji I learnt early on as part of JLPT4 and found quite easy to lock away somewhere in my brain.

Some suggest remembering the head of a horse as the kanji relates to the sign of the horse in the zodiac but that never worked for me – you may get more mileage perhaps.

However, it was 牛 (cow) that always had me confused and I constantly got it wrong as the only real difference between the two is the slight vertical line at the top of the kanji (牛).

My advice to separate the two in your mind is to imagine that the line at the top of 牛 (cow) is the horn of a bull, which is similar enough to a cow to trigger the memory.

As soon as I used that idea it was very easy to separate the two in my head and I moved on to the next 1943 kanji to memorise!

• Look-alike Kanji for Beginners
• Similar Kanji: Taste vs Wisdom
• Similar Kanji: Person vs Enter
• Similar Kanji: White vs Day
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself

While these kanji (味 – Flavour, taste and 知 – Know, wisdom) are less alike than some of my previous examples in this series, they still can provide some confusion at the JLPT 3rd and 4th levels with the same basic box on the side and a similar looking object on the side.

If you see these kanji in various textbooks be aware that they can look very different depending on the font style used to display them.

知 is clarified in my memory by visualising the left half as a person with a hat, arms and legs holding out his arm to get a book from a shelf (the box on the right), perhaps in a library or bookstore. This ties back nicely to growing your knowledge or “wisdom” by reading books.

To memorise 味 I break it down into two parts – the long rectangle on the left that looks like an outstretched tongue and the kanji on the right – 未 – that kanji on its own means “not yet”. So the memory trigger is that the character on the right has “not yet” come in to contact with the “tongue” on the left to be able to “taste” the “flavour”.

As I alluded to earlier, when you see these kanji written in a more traditional way (calligraphy), the long thin boxes on either side can look more like a square box, which may negate the “tongue” memory idea above. However, as with the English alphabet, once you have mastered these your brain can deal with the slight variations you will find between written styles.

There are several other kanji (和 – harmony, 咲 – blossom) that look similar to 味 and 知 but they’re both part of JLPT 2 and if you’re reading this you’re probably a long way from that level yet!

Visual memory triggers, called mnemonics, work well for me but it’s just one way of memorising kanji – use whatever works for you. If you’re keen to explore mnemonics further then I suggest a visit to the excellent Reviewing The Kanji website.

Example Usage

• Similar Kanji: Noon vs Cow
• Look-alike Kanji for Beginners
• Similar Kanji: Icicle vs Eternity
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North
• Have Fun With Kanji Reps