山 is the most transparent pictograph in the entire script: three peaks side by side, the middle one tallest. Oracle bone inscriptions show essentially the same silhouette you would sketch today if asked to draw "mountain range" without instruction. Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体 — three strokes, no reform needed in three thousand years.

Mandarin: shān, level 1st tone. 山 alone is mountain; 山水 (shānshuǐ, "mountains and waters") is the entire genre of classical landscape painting. Place names lean on it heavily: 泰山 (Tài Shān, sacred Mount Tai), 黄山 (Huáng Shān, Yellow Mountain), 山东 (Shāndōng, "east of the mountain") — a province named for its position relative to a single peak.

Japanese: on-reading サン (san) shows up in 火山 (kazan, volcano), 登山 (tozan, mountaineering), and most famously 富士山 (Fujisan). The kun-reading やま (yama) is everyday — and one of the commonest surnames in Japan: 山田 (Yamada), 山本 (Yamamoto), 山口 (Yamaguchi). Japanese folk religion still treats individual mountains as gods.

As a radical, 山 marks geography: 岩 (rock), 峰 (peak), 岡 (hill), 島 (island — sea + mountain). When you see ⼭ at the top or left of a character, the meaning will almost always involve elevation or terrain.

Memory aid: three peaks, middle tallest. Draw what you see.