False friends between Japanese kanji and Chinese characters I found while studying both languages.

I wanted to share something I noticed while learning Japanese that might count as “false friends” between Japanese and other languages.

Before studying Japanese, I had already started learning Chinese. For me, that made picking up simple Japanese kanji both easier and trickier (though the benefits def outweigh the drawbacks). But because of the Chinese knowledge, my brain SOMETIMES goes through this process when I see a Japanese kanji: See a Japanese kanji -> think of the literal meaning of the kanji in Chinese → then translate it into English…

That’s when I realized some Chinese-Japanese false friends are quite fun. The first one I ever noticed was 面白い.

In both Chinese and Japanese the characters look and mean the same literally(面 = face and 白 = white), but the actual meaning of the vocab is totally different. In Japanese it means “interesting/funny,” but in Chinese, if you take it literally, it feels more like “someone was shocked and turned pale in the face” (which actually exists as an expression in Chinese afaik).

Two other ones I found amusing while studying:

勉強: in Japanese it means “study,” but in Chinese it means “forced/ unwilling.” maybe studying really does feel forced sometimes? :/

I used to think the writing was exactly the same in both languages, but my Japanese friend later corrected me, which is a bit tricky. (勉強 vs 勉强)

手紙: in Japanese, it means “letter.” But in Chinese, “手纸” means toilet paper… don't send your penpal the wrong 手紙!