i don’t know why but i’m really amused by the winner of some ‘new kanji’ contest:
compare with the real kanji
座 (seat/gathering), but the two 人 (person) radicals have been moved from next to each other within the 土 (earth) radical to diagonally from each other, making this “social distance(d seating/gathering)”
This is hilarious, but to further the hilarity, I’d like to point to the fact that half of the “A rank” (runners up) for this contest also are related to 2020 epidemic jokes
First up we have:
Compare with 太
The original kanji means “to gain weight”. But it adds the コ “ko” and ロ “ro” katakana symbols at the top to represent the weight you gain while staying home due to the corona virus.
Then we have:
Compare with 会
The original kanjij means “meeting”, but the lower radical is changed to look more like a “Z” to represent Zoom meetings. Thus, the new kanji means “web meetings” or “zoom calls”
And of course another social distancing one:
Compare with 話
This means “to talk” or “chat”, but it’s changed simply to show the two radicals social distancing from one another as we should also while holding conversations nowadays.
At least we can have some fun language humor despite all of this!
On a more serious note but this reminded me of an art piece I learned about recently called “Book from the Sky” by Chinese artist Xu Bing. He created many made up Kanji and placed them in books and on large scrolls, one of which is hanging from the sky.
It’s interesting how he chooses to spend days creating books that can not be read and recontextualizing his relationship with written language.
I don’t know much about Kanji but I think it’s incredible that they allow for manipulation so easily.
