kanji

(JP: 漢字; PR: "kan-jee")
The principal characters used for writing Chinese or Japanese. In Mandarin, kanji are known as hanzi.

The character 漢 means "the Han people" (the ethnic majority in China), and 字 means "letter, character." Each kanji has (a) a meaning and (b) at least one associated sound. For example, the kanji 書 means "write" and is read as sho or kaku in Japanese and shu in Mandarin. There are tens of thousands of kanji, although only a small proportion are used for the purposes of day-to-day communication.