Inside the body

有 is a hand (the ナ/又 on top) holding a piece of meat (月 here is 肉, "flesh", not moon). To hold meat in your hand is to have it — the abstract idea of possession grew straight out of a fist closed around food. The single most important thing to learn here: the 月-shaped element is flesh, not the moon.

Mandarin: yǒu, 3rd tone, and the 8th most frequent character in the entire language — it appears in almost every sentence. 有 (yǒu, to have) pairs with its negation 没有 (méiyǒu, to not have); 我有 (wǒ yǒu, "I have") is the basic frame of possession. 有名 (yǒumíng, famous, "have a name"), 所有 (suǒyǒu, all / ownership).

Japanese: on-readings ユウ (yū) and ウ (u); kun-reading あ.る (aru, to exist). 有名 (yūmei, famous), 所有 (shoyū, possession), and most beautifully 有り難い (arigatai) — literally "difficult to exist", i.e. rare and precious. The everyday Japanese "thank you", ありがとう (arigatō), descends directly from this 有.

Korean hanja-sound "yu": 有名 (yumyeong, famous), 所有 (soyu, ownership), 有無 (yumu, presence-or-absence). It draws the most basic line there is — between what exists and what does not.

Memory aid: a hand (ナ) over meat (月) — what the hand grips is what you "have".

The character for "tears" diverged in interesting ways across the three CJK regions. The traditional 淚 combined 氵 (water) with 戾 (to deviate / to be twisted out of shape — a face contorted by weeping) as a phonetic-semantic compound. Japanese shinjitai 涙 simplified the right side. Mainland simplified 泪 went a different direction entirely — replacing the right side with 目 (eye), creating perhaps the most pictorially honest version: literally "water from the eye." The Mainland simplification is closer to a pure ideograph than the original.

Korean reading "ru" (or "nu" word-initially per phonotactic rules). Largely formal/literary: 落淚 (nangnu, shedding tears), 淚液 (nuaek, tear fluid — medical), 感淚 (gamnu, tears of being moved), 血淚 (hyeollu, "blood tears" — extreme grief). The everyday Korean word for tears is the native (nunmul, "eye-water") — a perfect Korean parallel to the simplified 泪.

Mandarin lèi, 4th tone (simplified 泪). 眼泪 (yǎnlèi, "eye-tears" — note the doubling; both characters reference eyes/water for emphasis), 泪水 (lèishuǐ, tears), 流泪 (liúlèi, to shed tears), 含泪 (hánlèi, "holding back tears"). Common in songs, poetry, and emotional speech.

Japanese on-reading ルイ (rui) is uncommon, surviving in 涙腺 (ruisen, tear ducts) and 感涙 (kanrui, tears of emotion). The kun-reading なみだ (namida) is the standard Japanese word for tears in all contexts: 涙が出る (namida ga deru, tears come), 涙を流す (namida o nagasu, to shed tears). Japanese poetry and song are saturated with namida — it is one of the most poetically loaded words in the language.

Memory aid: water (氵) flowing from the place where 戾 / 目 (the contorted face / the eye) meets feeling — tears.

Phonetic-semantic compound: 月 (the flesh-radical, identical in shape to "moon" but historically 肉, body — already discussed in 月 entry) + 几 (a small table / armrest, providing phonetic value). The encoded meaning: "soft flesh / fine skin texture" — the smooth surface of the body. Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体.

Cross-language usage split is sharp on this character: — Korean / Mandarin: 肌 is mostly literary or technical. The everyday word for "skin" is 皮 (Korean: pibu = 皮膚). Mandarin uses 肌 mainly in 肌肉 (jīròu, muscle). — Japanese: はだ (hada, skin) — the kun-reading — is the EVERYDAY word for skin, especially in cosmetics, health, and beauty contexts. お肌 (ohada, "your skin") appears constantly in Japanese commercials.

Mandarin: jī, level 1st tone. 肌肉 (jīròu, muscle), 肌肤 (jīfū, skin / complexion — formal), 心肌梗塞 (xīnjī gěngsè, heart attack — "heart-muscle blockage" — modern medical vocabulary). Note 肌 in Mandarin tends to mean "muscle" as much as "skin" — slightly different from Japanese where 肌 strictly means skin.

Japanese: kun-reading はだ (hada) is dominant — 肌 (hada, skin), お肌 (ohada, your skin — polite), 肌色 (hadairo, skin color — note this term is being phased out for ペールオレンジ "pale orange" in inclusive contexts), 肌着 (hadagi, undergarment — clothing worn against skin), 鳥肌 (torihada, goosebumps — "bird skin"). 鳥肌が立つ (torihada ga tatsu, "goosebumps stand up") describes shivers from awe or chill.

The Japanese cosmetics industry is built on this character. Walk through any drugstore cosmetics aisle in Japan and you'll see 肌 in 90% of the product names: 美肌 (bihada, beautiful skin), 素肌 (suhada, bare skin), 乾燥肌 (kansōhada, dry skin).

Memory aid: flesh + smooth surface = the soft skin that covers us.

身 has a striking origin: oracle bone forms show a person in profile with a swollen belly — a pregnant woman. The original meaning was "to be with child / pregnant body", which generalized to "body / self / one's person". Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体.

The etymology explains the modern semantic spread. 身 covers the physical body (身体, shēntǐ) and also the social self / identity / status: 身分 (shēnfèn / mibun, identity/status), 出身 (chūshēn / shusshin, origins/background — "from what body/family"), 自身 (zìshēn / jishin, oneself), 终身 (zhōngshēn, lifelong), 修身 (xiūshēn, self-cultivation). Confucian ethics treats 修身 as the foundation for governing a family, then a state, then the world.

Mandarin: shēn, level 1st tone. 身体 (shēntǐ, body / health), 身高 (shēngāo, height), 身边 (shēnbiān, beside one — "body-side"), 全身 (quánshēn, whole body), 单身 (dānshēn, single/unmarried). Also the measure word for outfits: 一身衣服 (yīshēn yīfu, "one outfit").

Japanese: on-reading シン (shin) in 身体 (shintai, body — formal), 身分 (mibun, social status), 自身 (jishin, oneself), 出身 (shusshin, hometown/origin — a Japanese cultural keyword). The kun-reading み (mi) is the everyday word — 身 (mi, body / oneself / flesh of fish), 中身 (nakami, contents — "inside body"), 親身 (shinmi, kindred). Pairs naturally with 心 to form 心身 (shinshin, mind and body).

Memory aid: a person standing in profile with a curved belly. The character is a body.

心 is an anatomically observant drawing of an actual heart. Oracle bone forms preserve the outlines of left atrium, right atrium, and ventricle clearly — the ancient scribes had seen what they were drawing, perhaps from sacrificial animals. This single fact explains a deep cultural pattern: in CJK languages "mind" lives in the chest, not the head. Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体.

As a radical, 心 takes two positional forms. On the left of a compound it flattens into 忄 ("heart-side radical"); at the bottom it stays whole as 心. Both mark emotion or mental state: 思 (think — field + heart), 想 (imagine), 愛 (love), 念 (remember/recite), 怒 (anger — "slave heart"), 怕 (fear), 悲 (sad), 忘 (forget — "lost heart"), 忙 (busy — "lost mind"), 性 (nature — "heart of birth"). When you see 忄 or 心 inside a character, predict an emotion or mental verb.

Mandarin: xīn, level 1st tone. 心 covers heart (organ), mind, and center: 心脏 (xīnzàng, heart organ), 心情 (xīnqíng, mood), 中心 (zhōngxīn, center), 担心 (dānxīn, worry — "carry heart"), 关心 (guānxīn, care about), 小心 (xiǎoxīn, careful — "small heart"). The center-of-something meaning comes from the heart's location in the body.

Japanese: on-reading シン (shin) in 心配 (shinpai, worry), 中心 (chūshin, center), 安心 (anshin, peace of mind). The kun-reading こころ (kokoro) is one of the most beloved Japanese words — three syllables that mean heart, mind, and spirit indivisibly. 心 (kokoro) is also the title of Sōseki's 1914 novel, often considered the most important work of modern Japanese literature.

Memory aid: a four-stroke heart — the dot, the curl, two flames. The middle dot is the chamber.