title: Aral Sea

text: The South Aral Sea, half of which lies in Uzbekistan, was abandoned to its fate. Most of Uzbekistan's part of the Aral Sea is completely shriveled up. Only excess water from the North Aral Sea is periodically allowed to flow into the largely dried-up South Aral Sea through a sluice in the dyke. Discussions had been held on recreating a channel between the somewhat improved North and the desiccated South, along with uncertain wetland restoration plans throughout the region, but political will is lacking. Unlike Kazakhstan, which has partially revived its part of the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan shows no signs of abandoning the Amu Darya river to irrigate their cotton, and is moving toward oil exploration in the drying South Aral seabed.


title: Aral Sea

text: Attempts to mitigate the effects of desertification include planting vegetation in the newly exposed seabed; however, intermittent flooding of the eastern basin is likely to prove problematic for any development. Redirecting what little flow there is from the Amu Darya to the western basin may salvage fisheries there while relieving the flooding of the eastern basin.


title: Aral Sea

text: The Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia (ICWC) was formed on 18 February 1992 to formally unite Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the hopes of solving environmental, as well as socioeconomic problems in the Aral Sea region. The River Basin Organizations (the BVOs) of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers were institutions called upon by the ICWC to help manage water resources. According to the ICWC, the main objectives of the body are:


title: Aral Sea

text: The International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) was developed on 23 March 1993, by the ICWC to raise funds for the projects under Aral Sea Basin programmes. The IFAS was meant to finance programmes to save the sea and improve on environmental issues associated with the basin's drying. This programme has had some success with joint summits of the countries involved and finding funding from the World Bank to implement projects; however, it faces many challenges, such as enforcement and slowing progress.


title: Aral Sea

text: Vozrozhdeniya (Russian for "rebirth") Island is a former island of the Aral Sea or South Aral Sea. Due to the ongoing shrinkage of the Aral, it became first a peninsula in mid-2001 and finally part of the mainland. Other islands like Kokaral and Barsa-Kelmes shared a similar fate. Since the disappearance of the Southeast Aral in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya Island effectively no longer exists as a distinct geographical feature. The area is now shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.


title: Aral Sea

text: In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweapons laboratory was established on the island, in the centre of the Aral Sea which is now disputed territory between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The exact history, functions and current status of this facility are still unclear, but bio-agents tested there included "Bacillus anthracis", "Coxiella burnetii", "Francisella tularensis", "Brucella suis", "Rickettsia prowazekii", "Variola major" (smallpox), "Yersinia pestis", botulinum toxin, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus.


title: Aral Sea

text: In 1971, weaponized smallpox from the island reached a nearby ship, which then allowed the virus to spread to the city of Aral. Ten people there were infected, of whom three died, and a massive vaccination effort involving 50,000 inhabitants ensued (see Aral smallpox incident). The bioweapons base was abandoned in 1992 following the disintegration of the Soviet Union the previous year. Scientific expeditions proved this had been a site for production, testing and later dumping of pathogenic weapons. In 2002, through a project organized by the United States and with Uzbekistan's assistance, 10 anthrax burial sites were decontaminated. According to the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections, all burial sites of anthrax were decontaminated.


title: Aral Sea

text: Ergash Shaismatov, the deputy prime minister of Uzbekistan, announced on 30 August 2006, that the Uzbek government and an international consortium consisting of state-run Uzbekneftegaz, LUKoil Overseas, Petronas, Korea National Oil Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a production-sharing agreement to explore and develop oil and gas fields in the Aral Sea, saying, "The Aral Sea is largely unknown, but it holds a lot of promise in terms of finding oil and gas. There is risk, of course, but we believe in the success of this unique project." The consortium was created in September 2005.


title: Aral Sea

text: The plight of the Aral coast was portrayed in the 1989 film "Psy" ("Stray Dogs") by Soviet director Dmitri Svetozarov. The film was shot on location in an actual ghost town located near the Aral Sea, showing scenes of abandoned buildings and scattered vessels.


title: Aral Sea

text: In 2000, the MirrorMundo foundation produced a documentary film called "Delta Blues" about the problems arising from the drying up of the sea.


title: Aral Sea

text: In June 2007, BBC World broadcast a documentary called "Back From the Brink?" made by Borna Alikhani and Guy Creasey, which showed some of the changes in the region since the introduction of the Aklak Dam.


title: Aral Sea

text: Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov's 2012 movie "Waiting for the Sea" deals with the impacts on people's life in a fishing town at the shore of the Aral Sea.


title: Aral Sea

text: In 2012 Christoph Pasour and Alfred Diebold produced an 85-minute film with the title "From the glaciers to the Aral Sea", which shows the water management system in the Aral Sea basin and in particular the situation around the Aral Sea. The film was first screened at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, France, in 2012 and is now available on the website: www.waterunites-ca.org and on Alfred Diebold's YouTube channel: waterunitesca.


title: Aral Sea

text: In October 2013, Al Jazeera produced a documentary film called "People of The Lake", directed by Ensar Altay, describing the current situation.


title: Aral Sea

text: In 2014, director Po Powell shot much of the footage for the Pink Floyd single "Louder than Words" video near the remains of the Aral Sea on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.


title: Aral Sea

text: In October 2018, the BBC produced a programme called "Fashion's Dirty Secrets", a large part of which shows the extent of the shrinking Aral and its consequences, together with maybe a little glimmer of hope.


title: Kanji

text: The term "kanji" in Japanese literally means "Han characters". It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese, and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as "hanzi" (). The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since made a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records. Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier Yayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters.


title: Kanji

text: Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or the other. For example, means 'honest' in both languages but is pronounced "makoto" or "sei" in Japanese, and "chéng" in Standard Mandarin Chinese. Individual kanji characters invented in Japan, or multi-kanji words coined in Japanese, have also influenced and been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. For example, the word for telephone, "denwa" in Japanese, is calqued as "diànhuà" in Mandarin Chinese, "điện thoại" in Vietnamese and "jeonhwa" in Korean.


title: Kanji

text: Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China. The earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Wa emissary in 57 AD. Chinese coins as well as inkstones from the first century AD have also been found in Yayoi period archaeological sites. However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread. According to the "Nihon Shoki" and "Kojiki", a semi-legendary scholar called Wani was dispatched to Japan by the Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters.


title: Kanji

text: The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called "fuhito" were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.


title: Kanji

text: In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called "mokkan" (). These wooden boards were used for communication between government offices, tags for goods transported between various countries, and the practice of writing. The oldest written kanji in Japan discovered so far were written in ink on wood as a wooden strip dated to the 7th century, a record of trading for cloth and salt.


title: Kanji

text: The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (794–1185), a system known as "kanbun" emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on the fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. This was essentially a kind of codified sight translation.


title: Kanji

text: Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language, resulting in the modern "kana" syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called "man'yōgana" (used in the ancient poetry anthology "Man'yōshū") evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into "hiragana" (literally "fluttering "kana"" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or "onna-de", that is, "ladies' hand", a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana. "Katakana" (literally "partial "kana"", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified "man'yōgana" to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, "hiragana" and "katakana", referred to collectively as "kana", are descended from kanji. In contrast with "kana" (, literally "borrowed label", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as a "label" for its sound), "kanji" are also called "mana" (, literally "true label", in reference to the character being used as a "true label" for its meaning).


title: Kanji

text: In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems), while "hiragana" are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings ("okurigana"), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. "Katakana" are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.


title: Kanji

text: Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it. Kamo no Mabuchi, a scholar of the Edo period, criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for the limitation of kanji.


title: Kanji

text: After the Meiji Restoration and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread.


title: Kanji

text: However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the Japanese Army decided on the which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the with a total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society.


title: Kanji

text: In 1946, after World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan, the Japanese government, guided by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, instituted a series of orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals.


title: Kanji

text: The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established.


title: Kanji

text: Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called . Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.


title: Kanji

text: These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as .


title: Kanji

text: The are the 1,026 first kanji characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, from first grade to sixth grade. The grade-level breakdown is known as the , or the . This list of kanji is maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade.


title: Kanji

text: The are 2,136 characters consisting of all the , plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given . The were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the , introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the list was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously ; some are used to write prefecture names: , , , , , , , , , and .


title: Kanji

text: As of September 25, 2017, the consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants of . There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term refers to all 2,999 kanji from both the and lists combined.


title: Kanji

text: are any kanji not contained in the and lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist.


title: Kanji

text: The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Greek alphabet, Arabic numerals, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:


title: Kanji

text: are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well.


title: Kanji

text: Unicode allows for optional encoding of in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.


title: Kanji

text: The Text Encoding Initiative uses a element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji. (The "g" stands for .)


title: Kanji

text: There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The "Dai Kan-Wa Jiten", which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The "Zhonghua Zihai", published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but the majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms.


title: Kanji

text: A list of 2,136 "jōyō kanji" (常用漢字) is regarded as necessary for functional literacy in Japanese. Approximately a thousand more characters are commonly used and readily understood by the majority in Japan and a few thousand more find occasional use, particularly in specialized fields of study but those may be obscure to most out of context. A total of 13,108 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.


title: Kanji

text: Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words—or, in some cases, morphemes—and thus the same character may be pronounced in different ways. From the reader's point of view, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Although more than one reading may become activated in the brain, deciding which reading is appropriate depends on recognizing which word it represents, which can usually be determined from context, intended meaning, whether the character occurs as part of a compound word or an independent word, and sometimes location within the sentence. For example, is usually read "kyō", meaning "today", but in formal writing is instead read "konnichi", meaning "nowadays"; this is understood from context. Nevertheless, some cases are ambiguous and require a "furigana" gloss, which are used to simplify difficult readings or to specify a non-standard reading.


title: Kanji

text: Kanji readings are categorized as either "on'yomi" (, literally "sound reading", from Chinese) or "kun'yomi" (, literally "meaning reading", native Japanese), and most characters have at least two readings, at least one of each.


title: Kanji

text: However, some characters have only a single reading, such as or ; "kun"-only are common for Japanese-coined kanji ("kokuji").


title: Kanji

text: Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is , which is read as "sei, shō, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, i-kasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru", and "ha-yasu", totaling eight basic readings (the first two are "on", while the rest are "kun"), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct; see okurigana § 生 for details.


title: Kanji

text: Most often, a character will be used for both sound and meaning, and it is simply a matter of choosing the correct reading based on which word it represents.


title: Kanji

text: The , the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. It was often previously referred to as translation reading, as it was recreated readings of the Chinese pronunciation but was not the Chinese pronunciation or reading itself, similar to the English pronunciation of Latin loanwords. Old Japanese scripts often stated that "on'yomi" readings were also created by the Japanese during their arrival and re-borrowed by the Chinese as their own. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given an "on'yomi" reading despite not being a Chinese-derived or a Chinese-originating character. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple "on'yomi", and often multiple meanings. "Kanji" invented in Japan (kokuji) would not normally be expected to have "on'yomi", but there are exceptions, such as the character "to work", which has the "kun'yomi" ""hatara(ku)"" and the "on'yomi" ""dō"", and "gland", which has only the "on'yomi" ""sen""—in both cases these come from the "on'yomi" of the phonetic component, respectively ""dō"" and ""sen"".


title: Kanji

text: The most common form of readings is the "kan-on" one, and use of a non-"kan-on" reading in a word where the "kan-on" reading is well known is a common cause of reading mistakes or difficulty, such as in ("go-on"), where is usually instead read as "kai". The "go-on" readings are especially common in Buddhist terminology such as , as well as in some of the earliest loans, such as the Sino-Japanese numbers. The "tō-on" readings occur in some later words, such as , , and . The go-on, kan-on, and tō-on readings are generally cognate (with rare exceptions of homographs; see below), having a common origin in Old Chinese, and hence form linguistic doublets or triplets, but they can differ significantly from each other and from modern Chinese pronunciation.


title: Kanji

text: In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese sound, though there are distinct literary and colloquial readings. However, some homographs ( ) such as (' or ') (Japanese: "an, gō, gyō") have more than one reading in Chinese representing different meanings, which is reflected in the carryover to Japanese as well. Additionally, many Chinese syllables, especially those with an entering tone, did not fit the largely consonant-vowel (CV) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most "on'yomi" are composed of two morae (beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (to "ei", "ō", or "ū"), the vowel "i", or one of the syllables "ku", "ki", "tsu", "chi", "fu" (historically, later merged into "ō" and "ū"), or moraic "n", chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. It may be that palatalized consonants before vowels other than "i" developed in Japanese as a result of Chinese borrowings, as they are virtually unknown in words of native Japanese origin, but are common in Chinese.


title: Kanji

text: "On'yomi" primarily occur in , many of which are the result of the adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the English borrowings from Latin, Greek, and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts (occupying a higher linguistic register). The major exception to this rule is family names, in which the native "kun'yomi" are usually used (though "on'yomi" are found in many personal names, especially men's names).


title: Kanji

text: The , the native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or "yamato kotoba", that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. As with "on'yomi", there can be multiple "kun'yomi" for the same kanji, and some kanji have no "kun'yomi" at all.


title: Kanji

text: For instance, the character for east, , has the "on'yomi" "tō", from Middle Chinese "". However, Japanese already had two words for "east": "higashi" and "azuma". Thus the kanji had the latter readings added as "kun'yomi". In contrast, the kanji , denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native Japanese equivalent; it only has an "on'yomi", "sun", with no native "kun'yomi". Most "kokuji", Japanese-created Chinese characters, only have "kun'yomi", although some have back-formed a pseudo-"on'yomi" by analogy with similar characters, such as "dō", from "dō", and there are even some, such as "sen" "gland", that have only an "on'yomi".


title: Kanji

text: "Kun'yomi" are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of "yamato kotoba". Most noun or adjective "kun'yomi" are two to three syllables long, while verb "kun'yomi" are usually between one and three syllables in length, not counting trailing hiragana called "okurigana". "Okurigana" are not considered to be part of the internal reading of the character, although they are part of the reading of the word. A beginner in the language will rarely come across characters with long readings, but readings of three or even four syllables are not uncommon. This contrasts with "on'yomi", which are monosyllabic, and is unusual in the Chinese family of scripts, which generally use one character per syllable—not only in Chinese, but also in Korean, Vietnamese, and Zhuang; polysyllabic Chinese characters are rare and considered non-standard.


title: Kanji

text: Further, some Jōyō characters have long non-Jōyō readings (students learn the character, but not the reading), such as "omonpakaru" for .


title: Kanji

text: In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word , "naosu", when written , means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written it means "to fix or correct something". Sometimes the distinction is very clear, although not always. Differences of opinion among reference works are not uncommon; one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. As a result, native speakers of the language may have trouble knowing which kanji to use and resort to personal preference or by writing the word in hiragana. This latter strategy is frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと "moto", which has at least five different kanji: , and , the first three of which have only very subtle differences. Another notable example is "sakazuki" "sake cup", which may be spelt as at least five different kanji: , and ; of these, the first two are common—formally is a small cup and a large cup.


title: Kanji

text: Local dialectical readings of kanji are also classified under "kun'yomi", most notably readings for words in Ryukyuan languages. Further, in rare cases gairaigo (borrowed words) have a single character associated with them, in which case this reading is formally classified as a "kun'yomi", because the character is being used for meaning, not sound.


title: Kanji

text: "Ateji" (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ) are characters used only for their sounds. In this case, pronunciation is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of "ateji", narrowly "jukujikun"). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are also special cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading.


title: Kanji

text: The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese varieties, where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters—borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.


title: Kanji

text: Longer readings exist for non-Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where a long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as "kun'yomi"—see single character gairaigo, below)—the character has the seven kana reading "senchimētoru" "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading "pāsento".


title: Kanji

text: There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of "on'yomi" and "kun'yomi", known as or words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words): the first character of "jūbako" is read using "on'yomi", the second "kun'yomi" ("on-kun", 重箱読み).


title: Kanji

text: Formally, these are referred to as and . Note that in both these words, the "on'yomi" has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally are derived from sound changes common to loans from Chinese, hence distinctive of "on'yomi". These are the Japanese form of hybrid words. Other examples include , and .


title: Kanji

text: "Ateji" often use mixed readings. For instance the city of Sapporo (サッポロ), whose name derives from the Ainu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the "on-kun" compound (which includes "sokuon" as if it were a purely "on" compound).


title: Kanji

text: "Gikun" () and "jukujikun" () are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual "on'yomi" or "kun'yomi". From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a ("nankun", "difficult reading"), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character.


title: Kanji

text: "Gikun" are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading (meaning "cold") as "fuyu" ("winter") rather than the standard readings "samu" or "kan", and instead of the usual spelling for "fuyu" of . Another example is using (lit. "smoke grass") with the reading "tabako" ("tobacco") rather than the otherwise-expected readings of "kemuri-gusa" or "ensō". Some of these, such as for "tabako", have become lexicalized, but in many cases this kind of use is typically non-standard and employed in specific contexts by individual writers. Aided with furigana, "gikun" could be used to convey complex literary or poetic effect (especially if the readings contradict the kanji), or clarification if the referent may not be obvious.


title: Kanji

text: "Jukujikun" are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, ("this morning") is jukujikun. This word is not read as *"ima'asa", the expected "kun'yomi" of the characters, and only infrequently as "konchō", the "on'yomi" of the characters. The most common reading is "kesa", a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a single morpheme, or as a compound of "ke" (“this”, as in "kefu", the older reading for , “today”), and "asa", “morning”. Likewise, ("today") is also jukujikun, usually read with the native reading "kyō"; its on'yomi, "konnichi", does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in the broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as ("present-day"), although in the phrase "konnichi wa" ("good day"), "konnichi" is typically spelled wholly with hiragana rather than with the kanji .


title: Kanji

text: Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as Yamato ( or , the name of the dominant ethnic group of Japan, a former Japanese province as well as ancient name for Japan), and for some old borrowings, such as ("shishamo", literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu, ("tabako", literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or ("bīru", literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if the word was borrowed before the Meiji Period. Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana, especially Portuguese loanwords such as かるた ("karuta") from Portuguese "carta" (English “card”) or ("tempura") from Portuguese "tempora" (English “times, season”), as well as ("tabako").


title: Kanji

text: Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being "kera" (, “woodpecker”), "gumi" (, “silver berry, oleaster”), and "Hozumi" (, a surname). This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when , normally read as "koganemushi", is shortened to "kogane" in "kurokogane", although zoological names are commonly spelled with katakana rather than with kanji. Outside zoology, this type of shortening only occurs on a handful of words, for example "daigen(sui)", or the historical male name suffix "-emon", which was shortened from the word "uemon".


title: Kanji

text: Jukujikun are quite varied. Often the kanji compound for jukujikun is idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and "on'yomi" may or may not be used in Japanese. For example, (“reindeer”) is jukujikun for "tonakai", from Ainu, but the "on'yomi" reading of "junroku" is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese, such as ("ankō", “monkfish”).


title: Kanji

text: The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either "kun'yomi" or "ateji") or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word ("sumō", “sumo”) is originally from the verb ("sumau", “to vie, to compete”), while ("kyō", “today”) is fusional (from older "ke", “this” + "fu", “day”).


title: Kanji

text: In rare cases jukujikun is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective ("kawai-i", “cute”), originally "kawafayu-i;" the word is used in Chinese, but the corresponding "on'yomi" is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either ("fusawa-shii", as jukujikun) or ("sōō", as "on'yomi"). Which reading to use can be discerned by the presence or absence of the "-shii" ending ("okurigana"). A common example of a verb with jukujikun is ("haya-ru", “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding to "on'yomi" ("ryūkō"). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is ("yusuri", “extortion”), from ("yusu-ru", “to extort”), spelling from ("kyōsei", “extortion”). See the and articles in the Japanese Wikipedia for many more examples. Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using the usual "kun'yomi". Examples include ("omo-shiro-i", “interesting”, literally “face + white”) and ("zuru-gashiko-i", “sly”, literally “cunning, crafty + clever, smart”).


title: Kanji

text: Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings.


title: Kanji

text: Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of "ateji", though in narrow usage "ateji" refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas "jukujikun" refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling).


title: Kanji

text: Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began life as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally a single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is , which may be spelt in a great many ways, including , , , , , , , , , and —many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems.


title: Kanji

text: In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language (gairaigo), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include , , , and . See list of single character gairaigo for more. These are classed as "kun'yomi" of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as ateji, which is the classification used when a gairaigo term is written as a compound (2 or more characters). However, unlike the vast majority of other "kun'yomi", these readings are not native Japanese, but rather borrowed, so the "kun'yomi" label can be misleading. The readings are also written in katakana, unlike the usual hiragana for native "kun'yomi". Note that most of these characters are for units, particularly SI units, in many cases using new characters (kokuji) coined during the Meiji period, such as .


title: Kanji

text: Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called , which are mostly used for names (often given names) and, in general, are closely related to the "kun'yomi". Place names sometimes also use "nanori" or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.


title: Kanji

text: Although there are general rules for when to use "on'yomi" and when to use "kun'yomi", the language is littered with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given character may have multiple "kun'yomi" or "on'yomi". When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes "words" (multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings, rather than individual characters, and only guess readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word.


title: Kanji

text: Homographs exist, however, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot, requiring a glossary. For example, may be read either as "kyō" "today (informal)" (special fused reading for native word) or as "konnichi" "these days (formal)" ("on'yomi"); in formal writing this will generally be read as "konnichi".


title: Kanji

text: In some cases multiple readings are common, as in "pork soup", which is commonly pronounced both as "ton-jiru" (mixed "on-kun") and "buta-jiru" ("kun-kun"), with "ton" somewhat more common nationally. Inconsistencies abound—for example "gyū-niku" "beef" and "yō-niku" "mutton" have "on-on" readings, but "buta-niku" "pork" and "tori-niku" "poultry" have "kun-on" readings.


title: Kanji

text: The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by "okurigana" (hiragana characters that are part of the word)—as used in native verbs and adjectives—"always" indicates "kun'yomi", while kanji compounds (kango) usually use "on'yomi", which is usually "kan-on;" however, other "on'yomi" are also common, and "kun'yomi" are also commonly used in kango.


title: Kanji

text: For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their "kun'yomi", though there are numerous exceptions. For example, "iron" is usually read with the "on'yomi" "tetsu" rather than the "kun'yomi" "kurogane". Chinese "on'yomi" which are not the common "kan-on" reading are a frequent cause of difficulty or mistakes when encountering unfamiliar words or for inexperienced readers, though skilled natives will recognize the word; a good example is ("go-on"), where is usually instead read as "kai".


title: Kanji

text: Okurigana (送り仮名) are used with "kun'yomi" to mark the inflected ending of a native verb or adjective, or by convention. Note that Japanese verbs and adjectives are closed class, and do not generally admit new words (borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which are nouns, can form verbs by adding at the end, and adjectives via "-no" or "-na", but cannot become native Japanese vocabulary, which inflect). For example: "aka-i" "red", "atara-shii" "new", "mi-ru" "(to) see". Okurigana can be used to indicate which "kun'yomi" to use, as in "ta-beru" versus "ku-u" (casual), both meaning "(to) eat", but this is not always sufficient, as in , which may be read as "a-ku" or "hira-ku", both meaning "(to) open". is a particularly complicated example, with multiple "kun" and "on'yomi"—see okurigana: 生 for details. Okurigana is also used for some nouns and adverbs, as in "nasake" "sympathy", "kanarazu" "invariably", but not for "kane" "money", for instance. Okurigana is an important aspect of kanji usage in Japanese; see that article for more information on "kun'yomi" orthography


title: Kanji

text: Kanji occurring in are generally read using "on'yomi", especially for four-character compounds ("yojijukugo"). Though again, exceptions abound, for example, "jōhō" "information", "gakkō" "school", and "shinkansen" "bullet train" all follow this pattern. This isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different pronunciations. "north" and "east" use the "kun'yomi" "kita" and "higashi", being stand-alone characters, but "northeast", as a compound, uses the "on'yomi" "hokutō". This is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one "on'yomi": is read as "sei" in "sensei" "teacher" but as "shō" in "isshō" "one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; is read "i" when it means "simple", but as "eki" when it means "divination", both being "on'yomi" for this character.


title: Kanji

text: These rules of thumb have many exceptions. "Kun'yomi" compound words are not as numerous as those with "on'yomi", but neither are they rare. Examples include "tegami" "letter", "higasa" "parasol", and the famous "kamikaze" "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as (also written ) "karaage" "Chinese-style fried chicken" and "origami", although many of these can also be written with the okurigana omitted (for example, or ). In general, compounds coined in Japan using japanese roots will be read in kun'yomi while those imported from China will be read in on'yomi.


title: Kanji

text: Similarly, some "on'yomi" characters can also be used as words in isolation: "ai" "love", "Zen", "ten" "mark, dot". Most of these cases involve kanji that have no "kun'yomi", so there can be no confusion, although exceptions do occur. Alone may be read as "kin" "gold" or as "kane" "money, metal"; only context can determine the writer's intended reading and meaning.


title: Kanji

text: Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is , which can be read in three different ways: "jōzu" (skilled), "uwate" (upper part), or "kamite" (stage left/house right). In addition, has the reading "umai" (skilled). More subtly, has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow": "ashita" (casual), "asu" (polite), and "myōnichi" (formal). Furigana (reading glosses) is often used to clarify any potential ambiguities.


title: Kanji

text: Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example, (privately established, esp. school) and (city established) are both normally pronounced "shi-ritsu;" in speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciations "watakushi-ritsu" and "ichi-ritsu". More informally, in legal jargon "preamble" and "full text" are both pronounced "zen-bun", so may be pronounced "mae-bun" for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble [not 'whole text'] of the constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily using a "kun'yomi" for one character in a normally "on'yomi" term.


title: Kanji

text: As stated above, "jūbako" and "yutō" readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading are possible: "on-on", "kun-kun", "kun-on" and "on-kun".


title: Kanji

text: Certain words take different readings depending on whether the context concerns legal matters or not. For example:


title: Kanji

text: For legal contexts where distinction must be made for homophonous words such as "baishun" and "karyō", see Ambiguous readings below.


title: Kanji

text: In some instances where even context cannot easily provide clarity for homophones, alternative readings or mixed readings can be used instead of regular readings to avoid ambiguity. For example:


title: Kanji

text: Several famous place names, including those of Japan itself ( "Nihon" or sometimes "Nippon"), those of some cities such as Tokyo ( "Tōkyō") and Kyoto ( "Kyōto"), and those of the main islands Honshu ( "Honshū"), Kyushu ( "Kyūshū"), Shikoku ( "Shikoku"), and Hokkaido ( "Hokkaidō") are read with "on'yomi"; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with "kun'yomi": "Ōsaka", "Aomori", "Hakone". Names often use characters and readings that are not in common use outside of names. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may not match that in the original. The Osaka () and Kobe () baseball team, the Hanshin () Tigers, take their name from the "on'yomi" of the second kanji of "Ōsaka" and the first of "Kōbe". The name of the Keisei () railway line—linking Tokyo () and Narita ()—is formed similarly, although the reading of from is "kei", despite "kyō" already being an "on'yomi" in the word "Tōkyō".


title: Kanji

text: Japanese family names are also usually read with "kun'yomi": "Yamada", "Tanaka", "Suzuki". Japanese given names often have very irregular readings. Although they are not typically considered "jūbako" or "yutō", they often contain mixtures of "kun'yomi", "on'yomi" and "nanori", such as "Daisuke" ["on-kun"], "Natsumi" ["kun-on"]. Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the readings of given names do not follow any set rules, and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a person's name without independent verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called "Āsu" ("Earth") and "Enjeru" ("Angel"); neither are common names, and have normal readings "chikyū" and "tenshi" respectively. Some common Japanese names can be written in multiple ways, e.g. Akira can be written as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and many other characters and kanji combinations not listed, Satoshi can be written as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , etc., and Haruka can be written as , , , , , , , , and several other possibilities. Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make a good guess for most names. To alleviate any confusion on how to pronounce the names of other Japanese people, most official Japanese documents require Japanese to write their names in both kana and kanji.


title: Kanji

text: Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with "on'yomi". Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may differ widely from that used by modern Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's name is pronounced as in Japanese, and the name of the legendary Monkey King, Sun Wukong, is pronounced "Son Gokū" () in Japanese.


title: Kanji

text: Today, Chinese names that are not well known in Japan are often spelled in katakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana. Many such cities have names that come from non-Chinese languages like Mongolian or Manchu. Examples of such not-well-known Chinese names include:


title: Kanji

text: Internationally renowned Chinese-named cities tend to imitate the older English pronunciations of their names, regardless of the kanji's "on'yomi" or the Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, and can be written in either katakana or kanji. Examples include:


title: Kanji

text: In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing ("rendaku"), as in "hito-bito" "people" (more often written with the iteration mark as ), but in rare cases the readings can be unrelated, as in .


title: Kanji

text: Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as "furigana", (small "kana" written above or to the right of the character) or "kumimoji" (small "kana" written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners. It is also used in newspapers and "manga" (comics) for rare or unusual readings, or for situations like the first time a character's name is given, and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use "furigana" to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.


title: Kanji

text: Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji word—whether the pronunciation is known or not—can be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanji—indeed there are many homophonous "words", not simply individual characters, particularly for "kango" (with "on'yomi"). Easiest is to write the word out—either on paper or tracing it in the air—or look it up (given the pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated), various techniques can be used. These include giving "kun'yomi" for characters—these are often unique—using a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word via the words , , and —the first two use the "kun'yomi", the third is a well-known compound—saying ""kaori", "karai", "ryō" as in "inryō"."


title: Kanji

text: In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed in hiragana (for both "kun" and "on" readings), while borrowings ("gairaigo")—including modern borrowings from Chinese—are glossed in katakana; this is the standard writing convention also used in furigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are conventionally written in katakana for "on" readings, and hiragana for "kun" readings. Kun readings may further have a separator to indicate which characters are okurigana, and which are considered readings of the character itself. For example, in the entry for , the reading corresponding to the basic verb may be written as ("ta.beru"), to indicate that "ta" is the reading of the character itself. Further, kanji dictionaries often list compounds including irregular readings of a kanji.


title: Kanji

text: Since kanji are essentially Chinese "hanzi" used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern traditional Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity with Classical Chinese pronunciation imported to Japan from 5th to 9th century. Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from "hanzi" used in modern Chinese. Such differences are the result of:


title: Kanji

text: Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.


title: Kanji

text: In Japanese, refers to Chinese characters made outside of China. Specifically, kanji made in Japan are referred to as . They are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called "gukja" (), a cognate name; there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones. Other languages using the Chinese family of scripts sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese chữ Nôm, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and Zhuang sawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.


title: Kanji

text: Since kokuji are generally devised for existing native words, these usually only have native "kun" readings. However, they occasionally have a Chinese "on" reading, derived from a phonetic, as in , "dō", and in rare cases only have an "on" reading, as in , "sen", from , which was derived for use in technical compounds ( means "gland", hence used in medical terminology).


title: Kanji

text: The majority of kokuji are ideogrammatic compounds (), meaning that they are composed of two (or more) characters, with the meaning associated with the combination. For example, is composed of (person radical) plus (action), hence "action of a person, work". This is in contrast to kanji generally, which are overwhelmingly phono-semantic compounds. This difference is because kokuji were coined to express Japanese words, so borrowing existing (Chinese) readings could not express these—combining existing characters to logically express the meaning was the simplest way to achieve this. Other illustrative examples (below) include "sakaki" tree, formed as "tree" and "god", literally "divine tree", and "tsuji" "crossroads, street" formed as () "road" and "cross", hence "cross-road".


title: Kanji

text: In terms of meanings, these are especially for natural phenomena (esp. flora and fauna species), including a very large number of fish, such as (sardine), (codfish), (seaperch), and (sillago), and trees, such as (evergreen oak), (Japanese cedar), (birch, maple) and (spindle tree). In other cases they refer to specifically Japanese abstract concepts, everyday words (like , "crossroads", see above), or later technical coinages (such as , "gland", see above).


title: Kanji

text: There are hundreds of "kokuji" in existence. Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language. These include the following:


title: Kanji

text: Jōyō kanji has about nine kokuji; there is some dispute over classification, but generally includes these:


title: Kanji

text: Some of these characters (for example, , "gland") have been introduced to China. In some cases the Chinese reading is the inferred Chinese reading, interpreting the character as a phono-semantic compound (as in how "on" readings are sometimes assigned to these characters in Chinese), while in other cases (such as ), the Japanese "on" reading is borrowed (in general this differs from the modern Chinese pronunciation of this phonetic). Similar coinages occurred to a more limited extent in Korea and Vietnam.


title: Kanji

text: Historically, some kokuji date back to very early Japanese writing, being found in the "Man'yōshū", for example— "iwashi" "sardine" dates to the Nara period (8th century)—while they have continued to be created as late as the late 19th century, when a number of characters were coined in the Meiji era for new scientific concepts. For example, some characters were produced as regular compounds for some (but not all) SI units, such as ( "meter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer, ( "liter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kiloliter, and ( "gram" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilogram. However, SI units in Japanese today are almost exclusively written using rōmaji or katakana such as or for km, for kl, and or for kg.


title: Kanji

text: In Japan, the kokuji category is strictly defined as characters whose "earliest" appearance is in Japan. If a character appears earlier in the Chinese literature, it is not considered a kokuji even if the character was independently coined in Japan and unrelated to the Chinese character (meaning "not borrowed from Chinese"). In other words, kokuji are not simply characters that were made in Japan, but characters that were "first" made in Japan. An illustrative example is . This spelling was created in Edo period Japan from the ateji (phonetic kanji spelling) for the existing word "ankō" by adding the radical to each character—the characters were "made in Japan". However, is not considered kokuji, as it is found in ancient Chinese texts as a corruption of (魚匽). is considered kokuji, as it has not been found in any earlier Chinese text. Casual listings may be more inclusive, including characters such as . Another example is , which is sometimes not considered kokuji due to its earlier presence as a corruption of Chinese .


title: Kanji

text: In addition to "kokuji", there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese that are different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered "kokuji" but are instead called "kokkun" () and include characters such as the following:


title: Kanji

text: Han-dynasty scholar Xu Shen in his 2nd-century dictionary "Shuowen Jiezi" classified Chinese characters into six categories ( "liùshū", Japanese: "rikusho"). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.


title: Kanji

text: "Shōkei" (Mandarin: "xiàngxíng") characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example, is an eye, while is a tree. The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear in oracle bone script and seal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.


title: Kanji

text: "Shiji" (Mandarin: "zhǐshì") characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as "up" or "above" and "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.


title: Kanji

text: "Kaii" (Mandarin: "huìyì") characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is (rest) from (person radical) and (tree). Another is the "kokuji" (mountain pass) made from (mountain), (up) and (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.


title: Kanji

text: "Keisei" (Mandarin: "xíngshēng") characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so "keisei moji" will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese "on'yomi" of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to "kun'yomi". The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.


title: Kanji

text: "Tenchū" (Mandarin: "zhuǎnzhù") characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different "on'yomi", "gaku" 'music' and "raku" 'pleasure'.


title: Kanji

text: "Kasha" (Mandarin: "jiǎjiè") are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar-sounding word. For example, in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat , originally meant "to come", being a "keisei moji" having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.


title: Kanji

text: The iteration mark () is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example and . This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the surname Sasaki (). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji , a variant of .


title: Kanji

text: Another abbreviated symbol is , in appearance a small katakana "ke", but actually a simplified version of the kanji , a general counter. It is pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as , "rokkagetsu" "six months") or "ga" if used as a genitive (as in 関ヶ原 "sekigahara" "Sekigahara").


title: Kanji

text: The way how these symbols may be produced on a computer depends on the operating system. In macOS, typing will reveal the symbol as well as , and . To produce , type . Under Windows, typing will reveal some of these symbols, while in Google IME, may be used.


title: Kanji

text: Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character , meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical meaning "tree". When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation.


title: Kanji

text: Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kana representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The gojūon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.


title: Kanji

text: Japanese schoolchildren are expected to learn 1,026 basic kanji characters, the "kyōiku kanji", before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The "kyōiku kanji" list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji characters and extended to 2,136 in 2010, known as the "jōyō kanji"—characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade. Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and radical.


title: Kanji

text: Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used in James Heisig's series "Remembering the Kanji". Other textbooks use methods based on the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's "The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji" and Henshall's "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters". Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text "Kanji Pict-o-graphix", are also seen.


title: Kanji

text: The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation provides the "Kanji kentei" ( "Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken"; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the "Kanji kentei" tests about six thousand kanji.


title: Juan Mata

text: Juan Manuel Mata García (born 28 April 1988) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Turkish Süper Lig club Galatasaray. He mostly plays as a central attacking midfielder, but he can also play on the wing.


title: Juan Mata

text: A graduate of Real Madrid's youth academy, Mata played for Real Madrid Castilla in 2006–07, before joining Valencia in the summer of 2007. He became an integral part of the club's midfield, making 174 appearances over the course of four seasons. In August 2011, Mata signed for English club Chelsea of the Premier League for a fee believed to be in the region of €28 million, and in his debut season, won the UEFA Champions League and the FA Cup. The following year, Chelsea won the UEFA Europa League, making Mata and teammate Fernando Torres the first players to hold the Champions League, Europa League, World Cup, and the European Championships simultaneously. After falling out of favour at Chelsea under José Mourinho, Mata was sold to Manchester United in January 2014, for a fee of £37.1 million. He made 285 appearances over nine seasons at United, winning the Europa League and FA Cup again as well as the EFL Cup and FA Community Shield. He joined Galatasaray after his contract with United expired in the summer of 2022.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata was a Spanish international, having represented Spain at under-16, under-17, under-19, under-20, under-21, Olympic and senior levels. He played for the under-20 side in the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup. In June 2009, Mata played at the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, his first senior tournament. In September 2009, Mata scored his first goal for the senior team, against Estonia, securing the nation a place at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and was part of Spain's World Cup-winning squad. In 2011, he resumed playing in the under-21 side, helping Spain win the 2011 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship in Denmark. He won the Golden Player award and was part of the Team of the Tournament. Mata returned to the senior squad for UEFA Euro 2012 and, after coming on as a substitute, scored Spain's fourth goal in the final as Spain defeated Italy 4–0 to retain their title as champions of Europe.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata was born in Burgos, Castile and León. He inherited his name from his father, Juan Manuel Mata Rodríguez, who was also a footballer, playing as a forward for nearby Burgos CF in the 1980s and early 1990s. Mata was raised in his father's home town of Oviedo, Asturias. His father later acted as Mata's agent, becoming FIFA-registered in the process. In his spare time, Mata enjoys table tennis, a sport he played as a child.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata started his football career at Real Oviedo in 2000, where his father spent part of his career, before joining Real Madrid's youth academy, La Fábrica, in 2003 at the age of 15. After appearing for their "Cadete A" team, he then swiftly progressed through the junior teams, "Juvenil C" and finally "Juvenil A". In his last campaign (2005–06), he scored two goals in the league and three more in the "Copa de Campeones", including the winner in the final against Real Valladolid, adding another three in the "Copa del Rey Juvenil".


title: Juan Mata

text: Switching to Real Madrid Castilla in 2006–07, Mata was given the number 34 shirt in the first team, while wearing number 28 in Castilla. In spite of Castilla's final Segunda División relegation, he finished the season as the side's second best scorer with nine, behind striker Álvaro Negredo, who registered 18.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata had a release clause at Real Madrid during his last season at the club, and eventually agreed to sign for fellow La Liga side Valencia CF in March 2007, with the contract starting on 30 June 2007.


title: Juan Mata

text: Benefitting from constant injuries to Vicente and the ostracism to which then-manager Ronald Koeman condemned Miguel Ángel Angulo, Mata gradually carved a niche in Valencia's first eleven. On 20 March 2008, he scored twice in the Copa del Rey semi-final match against FC Barcelona to help Valencia reach the final against Getafe CF where, on 16 April, he scored the opener in a 3–1 win. During that first season, he was voted the team's "Best Young Player" by fans and players alike.


title: Juan Mata

text: In the 2008 Spanish SuperCup, Mata scored against his former club Real Madrid in a 3–2 first leg win, but Valencia lost 5–6 on aggregate after a 2–4 away loss in the second game. He started 2008–09 well, scoring in the opener against RCD Mallorca in a 3–0 win. He also scored the only goal of the game against CA Osasuna, latching on to a long ball from David Villa.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 25 September 2008, Mata proved to be growing in efficiency, as he set up two of his teammate's goals in a 2–0 away win over Málaga CF. Three days later, he put in a superb performance against Deportivo de La Coruña, scoring one and creating the other three, in a 4–2 home victory.


title: Juan Mata

text: Towards the end of the campaign, Mata managed to score two very important late goals for Valencia: the first, the 3–2 winner at Sporting de Gijón, and the second a penalty against Sevilla FC at home, to put Valencia 2–1 up (specialist Villa had already been replaced due to injury) in an eventual 3–1 success. He achieved impressive stats during the season, finishing with 11 successful strikes and 13 assists, behind just Barcelona's Xavi as the league's best.


title: Juan Mata

text: In the following two seasons, Mata was an ever present offensive figure for Valencia, scoring 17 goals in 68 league games combined, with the club achieving back-to-back third-league places. On 10 April 2011, he scored two in a 5–0 home win against Valencian neighbours Villarreal CF. On 9 May, England-based Spanish journalist Guillem Balagué reported interest from several Premier League clubs.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 21 August 2011, Valencia announced they had agreed a £23.5 million fee for the transfer of Mata to Premier League club Chelsea, subject to a medical. On 24 August 2011, Mata signed a five-year deal with Chelsea. He revealed that compatriot Fernando Torres helped persuade him to move to Stamford Bridge, saying "Fernando got me excited about the thought of coming here. He said it would be good for me here, and that me and him together could be good. I also talked to my family and friends about it as well."


title: Juan Mata

text: On 26 August 2011, Yossi Benayoun offered Mata his number 10 shirt. The Israeli captain said, "I decided to give Mata the number 10 – his favourite. For me, it's just a number, not my lucky 15." (Florent Malouda wore number 15 for Chelsea at the time.) Mata wore number 10 for Valencia and for Spain's under-21s in the summer, and expressed his gratitude to Benayoun. "It is a very important number to me so I'm pleased to be wearing it. I want to thank Yossi," he said. Mata followed on from Chelsea players Joe Cole, Mark Hughes, Ian Hutchinson, and Terry Venables in adopting the number 10 shirt.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata made his debut for Chelsea against Norwich City on 27 August 2011, where he came on as a 68th-minute substitute for Florent Malouda and scored the club's third goal in the 11th minute of stoppage time. Chelsea went on to win the match 3–1. He started his first game for his new club in their next fixture on 10 September away to Sunderland, helping Chelsea secure a 1–2 win. On 14 September, Mata made his UEFA Champions League debut for Chelsea and scored in stoppage time to help his side defeat Bayer Leverkusen 2–0.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 29 October 2011, Mata assisted Chelsea's 6,000th league goal with an in-swinging cross which was headed in by Frank Lampard. In the same game, Mata scored with a spectacular 25-yard strike in a 3–5 home defeat to London rivals Arsenal. On 26 November, Mata set up the first two goals which were scored by John Terry and Daniel Sturridge and also scored the third goal himself in a 3–0 win against Wolverhampton Wanderers. He was awarded the Man of the Match in a 0–3 away win at St James' Park for his performance against Newcastle United.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 6 December 2011, during Chelsea's decisive Champions League match against former club Valencia CF, Mata created two assists for both of Didier Drogba goals. The game ended in a 3–0 win, which resulted in Chelsea qualifying first from their group. On Boxing Day, Mata scored his side's only goal in a 1–1 draw at Stamford Bridge against Fulham. Mata scored Chelsea's first goal of their FA Cup campaign in a 4–0 win over Portsmouth at Stamford Bridge.


title: Juan Mata

text: In an FA Cup fourth round tie with Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road, Mata scored his side's only goal from the penalty spot in a 0–1 victory. On 5 February 2012, Mata scored against Manchester United in a 3–3 draw. On 21 February, Mata scored his side's only goal in their 1–3 defeat away at Napoli in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16.


title: Juan Mata

text: After the appointment of Roberto Di Matteo as interim first-team coach, Mata was played as a central attacking midfielder rather than being played on the left wing. Mata scored and had a penalty saved by Colin Doyle in the FA Cup fifth round replay against Birmingham City at St Andrew's, which Chelsea won 2–0, helping them into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. He continued his trait of scoring in each round; this run, however, ended against Leicester City in the quarter-final, which Chelsea nonetheless won 5–2. On 7 April, Mata scored his 11th goal of the season against Wigan Athletic, giving the Blues a 2–1 victory over the Latics and kept alive Chelsea's fight for a Champions League spot.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 15 April, in Chelsea's 5–1 win against Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium, Mata scored a controversial goal and assisted Ramires and Florent Malouda for their goals, adding to his statistics in the 2011–12 FA Cup with four goals and three assists. Mata started in both legs of Chelsea's Champions League semi-final clash with reigning champions FC Barcelona, helping his side to an unexpected 3–2 win on aggregate. and set up a final clash with Bayern Munich on 19 May.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata provided two assists to fellow Spaniard Fernando Torres in the 6–1 thrashing of West London rivals Queens Park Rangers on 29 April, bringing his tally to 13 Premier League assists on the season. Mata assisted the first goal in the FA Cup final, which Ramires scored, as Chelsea beat Liverpool 2–1 at Wembley, with Mata picking up the Man of the Match award. On 10 May, Mata was rewarded for his consistent form throughout his first Chelsea season by the fans voting him the club's Player of the Year, following on from Chelsea legends such as Dennis Wise and Gianfranco Zola, whom he had been compared to on various occasions.


title: Juan Mata

text: In the 2012 UEFA Champions League Final against Bayern Munich on 19 May, Mata assisted Didier Drogba's headed equaliser from a corner kick in the 88th minute. The match went on to extra time and penalties, with Mata taking Chelsea's first, which Bayern goalkeeper Manuel Neuer saved. Chelsea, however, went on to win 4–3 in the penalty-shootout, lifting their first Champions League title. Mata finished his first season at Stamford Bridge with 573 passes, creating 66 chances and completing 61 successful crosses, which all contributed to Chelsea's cup-double winning season. He finished the Premier League season with 14 assists – second highest in the league after Manchester City's David Silva – and six goals.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata missed all of Chelsea's pre-season games as he was playing for Spain at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, but he returned to play in the 2012 FA Community Shield against Manchester City and was substituted after 74 minutes for Daniel Sturridge. Mata assisted his first goal of the season on 22 September 2012 against Stoke City, providing a great flick to Ashley Cole, which turned out to be the winning goal as Chelsea won 1–0. He scored his first goal of the season in the 2012–13 Football League Cup third round against Wolverhampton Wanderers, with the game finishing 6–0 to Chelsea. Four days later, he scored his first Premier League goal of the season, assisting Fernando Torres for the opener and then scoring directly from a free-kick in a 2–1 away win against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata scored Chelsea's first and third goal in the Champions League as Chelsea beat Nordsjælland 0–4 away in Farum, Denmark. He later provided two assists in Chelsea's 4–1 rout of Norwich City, sending Eden Hazard through on goal and later flicking a delightful ball for defender Branislav Ivanović to volley in. In a London Derby game against Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane on 20 October, Mata scored twice and provided an assist for Daniel Sturridge in a 2–4 victory for Chelsea, where he also earned Man of the Match honours. He next scored in a Premier League match with a beautiful free kick against Manchester United. Chelsea, however, lost the match 3–2 after a late controversial goal from Javier Hernández. Mata went on to win the Premier League Player of the Month award for October after scoring three league goals.


title: Juan Mata

text: After manager Roberto Di Matteo was sacked following a 3–0 defeat to Juventus in the Champions League, Mata scored the first goal of new, interim manager Rafael Benítez's reign at Chelsea against West Ham United, although Chelsea suffered a 3–1 defeat in this game. He scored again in Chelsea's win over Nordsjælland in a Champions League game, but Chelsea still failed to advance to the knockouts despite a 6–1 win at home. He added to his tally of goals and his collection of fine performance at Sunderland in a 1–3 Chelsea win. After this game, Chelsea traveled to Japan for the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup. Here, too, Mata continued his top form by scoring Chelsea's first goal in the tournament against Monterrey in the semi-final, helping them on their course to the final with a 1–3 victory. The tournament, however, ended in disappointment as Chelsea were beaten 1–0 by Brazilian club Corinthians in the final. The team put the defeat behind them by completing an 8–0 routing of Aston Villa, a game in which though Mata did not score a goal, but nevertheless played a very influential part.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 22 December 2012, Mata signed a contract extension with Chelsea which tied him up with the club until 2018. On Boxing Day, Chelsea traveled to Carrow Road to face Norwich City, where both Manchester United and Arsenal had suffered defeats earlier in the season. Mata scored a brilliant goal in the 38th minute, taking a pass from Oscar into his stride and launching an unstoppable shot into the goal from 25 yards out. The goal turned out to be the winner. Then, on 5 January, Mata provided assists for new acquisition Demba Ba and Branislav Ivanović to help Chelsea win 1–5 against Southampton in the third round of the 2012–13 FA Cup. A week later, he forced an own goal from Jonathan Walters by putting in a tight corner and earned a penalty which Frank Lampard converted. Chelsea went on to win the game 0–4, which was Stoke's first home defeat of the season.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 3 March 2013, Mata made his 100th appearance in all competitions for Chelsea in a 1–0 win over West Bromwich Albion at Stamford Bridge. On 14 March, Mata scored an opening goal in Chelsea's Europa League 3–1 (3–2) win against Steaua București. On 19 April, Mata was nominated for PFA Players' Player of the Year in recognition of his contribution to Chelsea's season in all competitions. The PFA's decision was based on his "ability to not only create goals but also score them himself" and saw him nominated alongside teammate Eden Hazard. He also scored an 87th-minute winner against Manchester United, a crucial one for Chelsea's Champions League qualification hopes.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 15 May, Mata gave a fine performance in the 2013 UEFA Europa League Final against Portugal's Benfica, assisting Branislav Ivanović's injury time winner from a corner kick. The next day, he was awarded Chelsea's Player's Player of the Year award. He modestly gave the credit to the whole of the squad, saying that, "he felt proud to play for Chelsea," and thanked his teammates. He was also awarded Chelsea's Player of the Year for the second successive season. On winning his second award of the night, he said, "I feel so happy. It's my second season here and winning the trophy two years in a row is amazing for me. I just want to say thank you to all the supporters and all my teammates."


title: Juan Mata

text: Under new Chelsea manager José Mourinho, Mata spent a lot of time on the bench. Mourinho preferred Oscar as a playmaker, and suggested Mata needed to adapt to a wider position and to working harder defensively. On 28 September 2013, Mata came on as a half-time substitute against Tottenham Hotspur to assist John Terry to score an equaliser in a 1–1 draw, but his appearances in the first team remained infrequent. On 29 October, he scored his first goal of the season in a 2–0 League Cup victory at London rivals Arsenal.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata struggled to secure a regular first-team place under Mourinho as he had started just 11 of Chelsea's 22 Premier League matches. Mata scored 33 goals and provided 58 assists in 135 appearances over two-and-a-half seasons with Chelsea.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 24 January 2014, Mourinho said Chelsea had accepted a transfer offer from Manchester United and he allowed Mata to travel to Manchester to undergo a medical, after the player said he was "really happy to go". Manchester United confirmed later in the day that a transfer fee had been agreed, but that the deal was still contingent on Mata agreeing personal terms and passing a medical. The transfer was completed the following day, with Manchester United paying Chelsea a then club record fee of £37.1 million (€46 million), with Mata signing a contract until the summer of 2018.


title: Juan Mata

text: He made his debut against Cardiff City on 28 January and provided one assist in the 2–0 home victory. Mata scored his first goal for United in a 4–1 win over Aston Villa on 29 March 2014. He also went on to score two goals against Newcastle United in a 4–0 away victory, two more against Norwich City after coming off the bench in another 4–0 win, and the only goal in a 1–1 draw against Southampton in the final match of the season.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata ended the season having scored six goals for Manchester United, all in the Premier League, since he was cup tied and unable to play in the Champions League and other cup competitions due to his participation in the tournaments with Chelsea earlier in the season.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata began the new season in fine form. He scored the only goal in Manchester United's second game of the Premier League season, a 1–1 draw against Sunderland at Stadium of Light, following it up with a goal against Queens Park Rangers in a 4–0 thumping, which was also Louis van Gaal's first competitive win in charge of United. He was later dropped to the bench for the following two matches, making cameo appearances against Leicester and West Ham, with van Gaal preferring an attacking trinity of Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie and new signing Radamel Falcao in both games.


title: Juan Mata

text: Following Rooney's sending off and suspension due to a foul on Stewart Downing in the match against West Ham, Mata was reinstated to the starting lineup, and he started the next match against Everton, a 2–1 win at Old Trafford in which he provided the assist for Ángel Di María's goal. Mata later scored winning goals in home games against Crystal Palace and Stoke City, the former after coming on as a second-half substitute. He made his return to the starting line-ups for the first time, in a 3–0 win over Tottenham but was substituted in the 77th minute for Andreas Pereira. On 22 March 2015, Mata scored a brace, including a bicycle kick, in a 2–1 victory over Liverpool, a performance which he rated as his best for Manchester United. His second goal against Liverpool was also voted as Premier League Goal of the Month in March 2015. His inspired performances led to him being named as Manchester United's Player of the Month for March.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata, just as he had in the previous campaign, had a fine start to the season, getting an assist in the second game of the campaign against Aston Villa, which helped maintain his side's impressive record at Villa Park. September was a month to remember for Mata as he scored two goals and made two assists in just three games, as Manchester United claimed wins against Liverpool, Southampton, and Sunderland. As a result, Mata was crowned the club's Player of The Month.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata was made captain for the home game against Watford on 2 March and scored a free kick, which was also the match-winner. On 6 March, in a 1–0 defeat to West Brom, Mata received his first career red card after obtaining two yellow cards in the space of three minutes. Mata assisted an Anthony Martial goal against West Ham in the final game at the Boleyn Ground; however, United lost 3–2, ending their chances of beating Manchester City for fourth-place.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 21 May 2016, Mata scored for United in the FA Cup Final against Crystal Palace, leveling the score at 1–1 just three minutes after Jason Puncheon's 78th-minute goal. Mata was substituted in the 90th minute and replaced by Jesse Lingard, who would score the winning goal for United in extra time.


title: Juan Mata

text: At the beginning of the summer, Mata was reunited with his former Chelsea manager and the person who sold him to Manchester United, José Mourinho. On 7 August 2016, Mata was selected to be on the bench in the FA Community Shield. Mata replaced Jesse Lingard in the second half, then was substituted in added time for Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Although there were reports about tensions between the player and manager, after the match, Mata stated that there were no tensions between him and Mourinho. He started in the opening match of the season against AFC Bournemouth and scored Manchester United's first Premier League goal of the season with a tap-in after Simon Francis' error. After José Mourinho dropped captain Wayne Rooney, Mata served as the stand-in captain in the 0–0 draw against Burnley on 29 October 2016.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata scored his third brace of his Manchester United career, scoring both goals in a Boxing Day fixture against Leicester City. However, his efforts were cancelled out by a late equaliser from Harry Maguire which saw the match finish 2–2. Mata finished the season with three goals in 40 appearances for the Red Devils, as United finished second in the Premier League and lost in the 2018 FA Cup Final against his former club, Chelsea.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata scored United's first goal of the season in a friendly against Club América on 19 July 2018. Mata's first competitive goal came in the 3rd minute of United's League Cup exit to Derby County on 25 September 2018. On 6 October, Mata scored United's first goal in a 3-2 comeback win over Newcastle United. Later, on 7 November 2018, Mata scored the equaliser from a free kick in another late comeback 2–1 win over Juventus in a Champions League group stage fixture. Mata also scored in a 4–1 win over Fulham on 8 December 2018, before scoring his final goal of the season in a 1–1 draw against his former club Chelsea on 28 April 2019.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 19 June 2019, it was confirmed that Mata had signed a new two-year contract with Manchester United, keeping him at the club until June 2021 with the option of a further year. This ended months of speculation over his future.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata's first goal of the 2019–20 season came from the spot in 4–0 win over AZ in United's final Europa League group stage game. Mata later scored the only goal in January in an FA Cup third round replay against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Mata then scored in United's final game before the temporary suspension of football due to the COVID-19 pandemic in a 5–0 victory over LASK.


title: Juan Mata

text: After scoring against Luton and Brighton in the third and fourth round of the League Cup respectively, Mata received praise for his performance in a comeback 4–1 win against Newcastle United in the Premier League on 17 October 2020. Whilst not scoring he provided an assist for Maguire's equaliser as well as being involved in the build up for all other goals. Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær described his game as "fantastic" while Sky Sports said United's win was "largely thanks to [Solskjær's] decision to turn to Mata". On 23 May 2021, he scored his only Premier League goal of the season in a 2–1 away win over Wolverhampton Wanderers.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 2 July 2021, Mata signed a contract extension with Manchester United, keeping him at the club for another year. After having made twelve appearances throughout the whole 2021-2022 campaign, the last of which during the team's last league fixture against Crystal Palace (on 22 May 2022), Mata left the club at the end of the season following his contract expiration. The Spaniard's time at Old Trafford came to an end after eight years, a total amount of 285 appearances and 51 goals and four trophies won with the club.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 8 September 2022, he signed a one-year contract with Turkish Süper Lig team Galatasaray, with the option to extend the deal by a further year. He made his debut for the Turkish side on 24 September 2022, in a friendly match against Istanbulspor and showed an impressive performance.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata represented Spain from 2004 to 2016 at under-16, under-17, under-19, under-20, under-21, Olympic and senior levels.


title: Juan Mata

text: He helped Spain win the 2006 UEFA European Under-19 Football Championship, where he was a key player. He finished the championship second to his teammate Alberto Bueno (five goals) as top goal scorer of the competition, with four in five matches.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 1 February 2007, under-21 coach Iñaki Sáez included him on his squad for the friendly against England, alongside Real Madrid teammates Roberto Soldado, José Manuel Jurado, Sergio Sánchez, Miguel Torres, Esteban Granero and Antonio Adán, at just 18 years and 10 months.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 14 November 2008, Vicente del Bosque called Mata up to the senior team to play in a friendly against Chile. He did not leave the bench in a 3–0 home win. On 28 March 2009, he finally made his debut, playing in the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Turkey, a 1–0 win in Madrid. He came on as a substitute for teammate David Villa in the 63rd minute.


title: Juan Mata

text: In June 2009, Del Bosque included Mata for the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, the youngster's first senior tournament. He started in the second group match against Iraq and came on as a substitute for Albert Riera in the semi-final loss to the United States.


title: Juan Mata

text: On 9 September 2009, Mata scored his first goal for the senior team, as the 3–0 win against Estonia secured a place in the World Cup in South Africa. He followed this up with the winner against Armenia on 10 October, scoring a penalty to steal a 2–1 win. Picked for the final stages, he appeared once for the eventual champions, replacing Fernando Torres for the final 20 minutes of the 2–0 group stage win against Honduras.


title: Juan Mata

text: In 2011, the following summer, he returned to the under-21 side as a senior squad member and helped Spain win the 2011 UEFA European Under-21 Championship in Denmark. Mata himself was included in UEFA's Team of the Tournament and named as the tournament's Golden Player.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata returned to the senior squad for UEFA Euro 2012 and, after coming on as a substitute, scored Spain's fourth goal in the final as Spain defeated Italy 4–0 to retain their title as champions of Europe.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata was included in Spain's squad for the 2012 Olympic football tournament as one of their three designated overage players. Spain, however, failed to score in any of their opening three matches and were eliminated at the group stage.


title: Juan Mata

text: In addition to his favoured playmaking role through the centre of the pitch behind the forwards, Mata is also comfortable playing on either wing; he has also been used as a second striker on occasion. He makes up for a lack of pace with his control, technique, passing, creativity, and vision, which allows him to link-up with teammates and register many assists, in addition to scoring goals. A diminutive player, standing at , he lacks significant physical strength, heading ability, or aerial prowess, but is quick, agile, and nimble in his movements. Predominantly left footed, he is also a well-known free kick specialist. However, he has drawn criticism at times in the media over his limited defensive skills and work-rate.


title: Juan Mata

text: In November 2012, along with fellow Premier League players Santi Cazorla and Michu, Mata bought shares in former club Real Oviedo, who were struggling to raise €2 million to stay afloat in the Spanish third division.


title: Juan Mata

text: Mata and his father Juan Manuel Mata were part-owners of Tapeo and Wine, a Spanish restaurant on Deansgate in Manchester city centre, which opened in 2016 and closed in 2020 as a result of COVID-19. Mata and his father felt that authentic Spanish food options in Manchester were insufficient and so wanted to create their own restaurant. At the time, both Manchester managers, Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho were regular patrons.


title: Juan Mata

text: In August 2017, Mata announced in an article for "The Players' Tribune" that he was pledging one percent of his salary to a pledge-based charitable movement named Common Goal, and called for other football players to do the same.


title: James Milner

text: James Philip Milner (born 4 January 1986) is an English professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for club Liverpool. A versatile player, Milner has played in multiple positions, including on the wing, in midfield and at full-back.


title: James Milner

text: Milner's talent in football, cricket, and long-distance running was recognised early. He represented Horsforth School in these sports and played football for amateur teams from Rawdon and Horsforth. He supported Leeds United from childhood, joining the Leeds Youth Academy in 1996. He made his debut for the first team in 2002 aged 16 and gained prominence as the youngest player to score in the Premier League, and later spent time on loan at Swindon Town to gain further first-team experience. After Leeds United were relegated at the end of the 2003–04 season, Milner was sold to Newcastle United.


title: James Milner

text: Milner went on to make over 100 appearances for Newcastle United, winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2006, and spent a year on loan at Aston Villa, before signing for Aston Villa permanently in 2008. After winning the PFA Young Player of the Year award in 2010, Milner was signed by Manchester City, and went on to win two Premier Leagues, one FA Cup, one League Cup and one FA Community Shield. In 2015, Milner signed for Liverpool on a free transfer, and was appointed vice-captain. He went on to win the UEFA Champions League in 2019, as well as his third Premier League title, the UEFA Super Cup, the FIFA Club World Cup, and another FA Cup and EFL Cup title.


title: James Milner

text: Milner made a record 46 appearances for the England national under-21 football team, playing at the 2007 and 2009 UEFA European Under-21 Championships, finishing as runner-up in the latter. He won 61 caps for the full national team, scoring once against Moldova. He was selected for the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cup squads, as well as the 2012 and 2016 UEFA European Championships.


title: James Milner

text: Born in Wortley, Leeds, Milner played most of his childhood football for Westbrook Lane Primary School in Horsforth. He was later educated at Horsforth School. Graeme Coulson, a coach from Rawdon, recognised Milner's talent and persuaded him to play for Rawdon in several tournaments, including a tournament at Rawdon Meadows, where Milner scored four goals in their victory in the final.


title: James Milner

text: Milner was described as a "first class" student at his school; he left with 11 GCSEs and an award for his performance in physical education.


title: James Milner

text: Milner played for the Yorkshire Schools cricket team, was the cross-country champion at his school for three consecutive years and was the district champion over 100 metres for two years in a row. He then completed his studies at Boston Spa School, a sports college which was a partner to the football club.


title: James Milner

text: Milner supported his hometown club Leeds United from a young age. His earliest memory of the team was watching them win the FA Youth Cup in 1993. He and his parents, Peter and Lesley, were season ticket holders and Milner later became a ball boy for the club.