JLPT N5 Kanji – 万, man, 10000

This is 5 Minute Kanji, and today we are going to go over a monster kanji this time, the kanji for ten thousand.

Mnemonic:

A man carries 10,000 bonbons on a plate above his head to feed the monster.

Onyomi:

まん、ばん
man,  ban

Kunyomi:

よろず
yorozu

Like other kanji you use the onyomi, まん to count up. The ばん reading is used in other words to mean many or a lot. You can say 万年ばんねん or 10,000 years, which can mean eternity. よろず is not often used.

Mnemonic Factory

There are a few options for visual mnemonics. I used the one above, where you can imagine someone carrying a heavy load above his head and two incredibly long legs. Some people think of it as a stylized T to stand for ten thousand. Another mnemonic that I kind of like is that the top line is the sky and the bottom part is kind of a circle for Earth. It symbolizes everything between the sky and earth, which is a big number of things like 10,000.

For onyomi, MAN has a lot of words that we can use. You can use MONster, MONday, MONitor, MONument or harMONy. Then for BON, you have BONfire, BONnet, BONd, BONjour and BONBON. It’s my goal in life to put 10,000 BONnets on 10,000 MONuments.

The kunyomi, よるず, can be tricky. The word that probably most closely matches is EUROZOne. There are more than 10,000 places to visit and see in the EUROZOne.

Example Words

How about a few example words where this kanji is used?

Onyomi
​For onyomi, we have 万まん for 10,000. Contrary to the first 10 numbers, the kanji is often used in writing for ten thousand. You will often see it in prices for big ticket items like houses or cars.  You also have 万一まんいち to describe an unlikely event. There is also 万年筆まんねんひつ, lit. 10,000 year writing, for fountain pen. Finally, you have 万歳ばんざい for the ばん reading. 万歳ばんざい is used as a celebratory expression to mean “hooray” or “long life”.

Kunyomi
The よろず reading is really only used in one word 万よろず, but it is not often used. When using this reading it has a meaning of many or various.

Commonly confused with

天 – heaven
五 – five
七 – seven
下 – below, lower
方 – way of doing

Story Review

Can you remember the story from the beginning? Let’s give it a try, and yell out the words that are missing.

A ___ carries ______ ________ on a plate above his head to feed the ___ster.

Perfect? Let’s give it another try.

A ___ carries ______ ________ on a plate above his head to feed the ___ster.

Word Review

Can you read these? I’ll give you the kanji and please yell out the reading for each word

万

万一*

万年筆*

万歳*

万* – many, various

*Not an N5 word
That’s it for the kanji for ten thousand. Please let me know in the comments below if you have any questions. If you’d like to learn more kanji, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell mark to get a notification every time I send out a new video. Also, be sure to check out my other 5 Minute Kanji videos.

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