Today’s kanji spotlight is on the word 歌!

You may have seen this kanji around recently… Yup. It’s the kanji for song, and it appeared in the previous post as the Kouhaku theme for this year, “夢を歌おう”, or Sing the dream. Sing? Song? I’ll explain in a bit! But first, let’s look at how the kanji is written!

Proportions of the kanji 歌.

Stroke order of the kanji 歌

Now back to the phrase “夢を歌おう”. The first kanji 夢 (yume) means dream. 歌おう is a form of the verb 歌う, meaning to sing.

The definition of 歌う

That’s right, by adding a hiragana, 歌 changes from a noun, to a verb.

So I were to say 歌を歌う, it would mean sing the song. As for the difference between 歌おう and 歌う? 歌おう means let’s sing, whereas 歌う simply means sing.

Now you know!