The inside of '歳' is not '示'!
Last updated: 2024/10/25
This series, [Commonly Miswritten Characters], introduces characters that middle and high school students often write incorrectly, based on the correction and grading guidance of Shime-no, an instructor for essays and compositions, and serves as a warning to students and examinees.
Kanji are ideograms. Therefore, by knowing the origin of a kanji, you can understand the meaning and reason behind why it is written that way, which helps you avoid misremembering or miswriting it.
Today's character is '歳'.
'歳'
Many middle and high school students mistakenly write the bottom left part as '示'.
'歳' is a phono-semantic character. It combines '步' (the standard form of '歩'; however, the variant '歩' was adopted as a general-use character), which represents meaning, with '戉' (sai), which represents sound. '步' signifies the passage of time. '二十歳' (twenty years old) means that the cycle (passage) of a year has reached its twentieth turn.
The radical is '止'. This is the top part of '步'. In other words, it is a form where the bottom part is contained within '戉'.
As you can see, there is no '示' inside '歳'. Please be careful not to make this mistake.
Furthermore, a topic related to this kanji is whether to use '歳' or '才' to indicate age. Needless to say, '歳' is the correct one. '才' does not have the meaning of a yearly cycle, so it is incorrect. Then why does the notation '三才' (three years old) exist? A proofreader at Mitsumura Tosho (a publisher familiar for their Japanese language textbooks) has answered this on their company website.
Should you use '○歳' or '○才' when expressing age?
Formally, such as in official documents or laws, it is written as '○歳'.
However, because '歳' is a kanji learned in junior high school and is a difficult character with many strokes, it is often seen written as '○才' in reading materials for lower elementary school students and in daily life.
Nevertheless, in elementary school textbooks, the kanji '才' is not used, and hiragana is used instead, like '○さい'.
'才' is a kanji learned in the second grade, but even in sixth-grade teaching materials, the hiragana notation '○○さい' is used when expressing age.
In fact, '才' is a kanji that originally has meanings like 'talent' or 'ability' and does not have the meaning of age. Therefore, they make it a principle not to use '才' when expressing age as '○さい', emphasizing the original meaning of the kanji. After learning the kanji '歳' in junior high school, the kanji notation '○歳' is used to express age.
<Reference Materials>
Mitsumura Tosho 'Children and Adults' "Word Q&A"' Updated June 9, 2023
For those worried about 'how to write a statement of purpose,' this 'Shime-no Style Template for Creating a Statement of Purpose' is recommended!
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