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Why can the meaning of an unfamiliar kanji word sometimes be guessed?
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Japanese language
Record of a haiku exchange on kaishi writing paper by Japanese poet Bashō and one of his pupils in the teacher's own handwriting, 17th century, from a hanging scroll (ink on paper).
The meaning of an unfamiliar kanji word can often be guessed because many Japanese nouns are formed as compound characters, where two or more kanji are written together. By recognizing the individual ideograms within these compounds, a reader can often infer the meaning of the entire word based on the combined concepts represented by each character.1