List of Chinese–Japanese false friends explained

There are many false friendships between the Chinese and Japanese languages. These are words that look or sound similar to those in another language but have a significantly different meaning. The majority of these false friends result from the use of Chinese traditional characters in the Japanese script.

History

See main article: article and Sino-Japanese vocabulary.

Chinese characters are said to have been invented by Cangjie, one of the bureaucrats under the Yellow Thearch. Cangjie coined symbols known as "zi (字) following a study of the landscape, animals, and galaxy in the sky. "" (字) is the first Chinese character created, and Cangjie related it to a mythical story of the day these characters were created