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生: life, genuine

Also birth

Readings

On’yomi

  • セイ
  • ショウ

Kun’yomi

  • いきる
  • いかす
  • いける
  • うまれる
  • うまれる
  • うまれ
  • うまれ
  • うむ
  • おう
  • はえる
  • はやす
  • き
  • なま
  • なま-
  • なる
  • なす
  • むす
  • -う
On’yomi and kun’yomi?

On’yomi are readings that came from Chinese, written here in katakana. Kun’yomi are native Japanese readings, written in hiragana. Which one is used depends on the word: kanji in compounds often take an on’yomi, and a kanji standing alone often takes a kun’yomi.

What do the dots mean?

The kana after the dot, shown lighter, is okurigana: it is written in kana after the kanji. For example, the reading い·きる of 生 is written 生きる.

A hyphen means the reading is used as a prefix or suffix, attached to another word.

Stroke order

Speed

Strokes from KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Example words

  • 生(なま)raw; uncooked; fresh
  • 学生(がくせい)student (esp. a university student)
  • 人生(じんせい)(one's) life
  • 生(い)きliving; being alive
  • 生後(せいご)post-natal; since birth
  • 生前(せいぜん)while alive; during one's lifetime
Where do these words come from?

They are common words containing 生, from JMdict, picked automatically with words made of easier kanji first. They are not graded by JLPT level.

Keep exploring

Additional detailsSchool grade, frequency, Unicode and sources
School grade
Grade 1 (primary school)
Newspaper frequency
29 of 2,500
Classical radical
生 no. 100
Unicode
U+751F

School grade comes from the Japanese school curriculum. Frequency is the rank among the 2,500 most common kanji in newspapers. Neither is a JLPT level.

Sources for this entry