Even more than the compound words I really like the kanji that have basically pure pictograph meanings, like mountain pass being “mountain up down” 峠.
Side note my favorite mnemonic is for the word (hospital) patient, where a person (者) ate too much meat on a stick, and now the problem is in their heart 串 + 心 --> 患者
I suspect every language does this to some extent. Some good examples from Japanese:
靴 = shoes 下 = under 靴下 = socks
手 = hand 紙 = paper 手紙 = letter
歯 = teeth 車 = wheel 歯車 = cog / gear
火 = fire 山 = mountain 火山 = volcano
Sadly (?) the Japanese compounds are often only compounds of the symbols, not the spoken words.
Well 🇩🇪
Zahn = Tooth
Rad = Wheel
Zahnrad = cog 🎉
Even more than the compound words I really like the kanji that have basically pure pictograph meanings, like mountain pass being “mountain up down” 峠.
Side note my favorite mnemonic is for the word (hospital) patient, where a person (者) ate too much meat on a stick, and now the problem is in their heart 串 + 心 --> 患者