難
Eighteen strokes! What could this mean? It’s so difficult!
Right! It means ‘difficult.’ It’s pronounced NAN or muzukashii or katai in Japanese, nán in Chinese.
The bit on the left is a combination of ‘yellow’
黄 and
‘earth,’
土.
The right-hand element
隹
means ‘bird.’ Here’s an old version:
that looks very bird-like.
The story is that birds cannot find food easily on dry yellow ground, hence the meaning ‘difficult.’
This archaic ‘bird’ looks very hungry:
.
The Mainland Chinese now use this simplified version:
难.
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