What is the Kanji Origin Quiz?
The Kanji Origin Quiz is a free web app for learning how kanji can be explained from shape, marks, combined meanings, radicals, and sound clues.
The questions, choices, hints, diagrams, and explanations are original materials made for this app. They are not copied from textbooks, workbooks, entrance exams, tests, or official learning materials.
Learn four major formation ideas
The quiz focuses on pictographs, indicative characters, associative compounds, and phono-semantic characters. It also includes radicals, meaning clues, sound clues, and mixed review.
Some kanji origins have more than one scholarly explanation. This app uses simple learning-friendly explanations and avoids presenting them as the only possible answer outside the quiz context.
Why this quiz is useful
Kanji becomes easier to remember when learners see not only the written form, but also the idea behind the form.
Each quiz asks learners to notice whether the clue is a shape, a mark, a combined meaning, a radical, or a sound clue. This makes the activity feel like solving a small puzzle rather than memorizing a list.
Course lineup
- 10-question basics mix
- 20-question pictographs
- 20-question indicative characters
- 20-question associative compounds
- 20-question phono-semantic characters
- 20-question radicals and meaning clues
- 20-question sound clues
- 30-question formation type mix
- 50-question vocabulary and formation review
- 100-question elementary to middle school master course
Original hints with simple diagrams
Hints change based on the current question. They show original SVG diagrams for shape-based kanji, marks and lines, meaning combinations, radicals, and meaning-plus-sound structures.
My Page stores challenge history, best records, and often missed questions, making repeated review easier.
For teachers and families
This app can be used for short warm-up practice, home review, or a quick check after learning kanji formation types.
Because the questions are short 4-choice items, learners can try a few questions at a time and return to missed questions later.
Unofficial site notice
This site is not an official site of any ministry, school, university, publisher, cram school, examination body, or testing organization.
This site is not approved, certified, supervised, or affiliated with any organization or company.
The questions shown here are not reprints from textbooks, reference books, workbooks, entrance exams, qualification exams, certification exams, or mock exams.
Questions, choices, explanations, diagrams, and text materials are created independently for this site.
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Please check each official site for official curriculum, entrance exam, test, and learning material information.
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We will review the report and remove or revise content as needed.
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