Meaning & readings
freight, goods, property
On’yomi カ
Kun’yomi たから
Origin
This character combines a shell radical at the bottom with a sound hint at the top. The shell component, which represents 貝, historically symbolized valuable items and currency in ancient China — shells were actually used as money before metal coins. The top component 化 serves as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character rather than adding to its meaning. Together, the character depicts something precious and tradable, which is why it came to mean goods, freight, and property.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 154
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #822 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08CA8