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Indigo

On’yomiらん
Kun’yomiあい
JLPT N1 18 strokes #1985 most common Secondary school Radical grass
書き順 · Stroke order

How to write 藍

Stroke order is not decoration — it determines how the character looks handwritten and how dictionaries index it.

18 strokes
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Draw it on screen and be marked on stroke order and direction.

分解 · What it is made of

The parts of 藍

Almost every kanji is built from a small set of reusable parts. Learn the parts once and you stop memorising thousands of unrelated shapes.

radical grass
+ bottom oversee =
Indigo
部首 · Radical

The radical of 藍

Radical 140 of 214
Grass

The radical is the part a paper dictionary files a kanji under, and it usually hints at meaning. 藍 is filed under (grass) — radical number 140 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.

Other kanji built on 艸

練習 · Practice

Drill 藍 right now

Three quick games built from this character's real data. Your streak is kept in this browser.

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Indigo らん あい
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熟語 · In real words

Words that use 藍

Kanji are almost never met alone. These are the most common words built from this character, ordered by how often they actually appear in Japanese.

伽藍 がらん temple (esp. large one); monastery; temple building
藍綬褒章 らんじゅほうしょう Medal with Blue Ribbon
二藍 フタアイ deep purple, reddish indigo
本藍 ホンアイ natural indigo, true indigo dye
出藍 シュツラン pupil excelling his master
藍子 アイコ mottled spinefoot (Siganus fuscescens, species of Western Pacific rabbitfish), dusky rabbi
山藍 ヤマアイ Mercurialis leiocarpa (species of mercury whose leaves can be used to produce an indigo dy
木藍 キアイ anil indigo (Indigofera suffruticosa); Assam indigo (Strobilanthes cusia)
藍紙 ランシ indigo-dyed paper, indigo paper; spiderwort-dyed paper
藍花 アイバナ scum formed near the end of the indigo fermentation process; Asiatic dayflower (Commelina
同音 · Sound-alikes

Kanji that sound like 藍

Japanese has far more kanji than syllables, so one reading is shared by many characters. These are the ones you will confuse with 藍 — learn them together, not separately.

地名 · In place names

Japanese towns written with 藍

Place names are where kanji readings get strange — and where you meet this character in the wild.

画数 · 18 strokes

Other 18-stroke kanji

Useful when looking a character up by stroke count — and a common source of visual mix-ups.

頻度 · Frequency

Next in the frequency list

藍 is the 1985th most common kanji in written Japanese. Learning in frequency order is the fastest route to reading real text.

Think you know which kanji is more common?

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質問 · Questions

About the kanji 藍

What does the kanji 藍 mean?

藍 means Indigo. It is the 1985th most common kanji in written Japanese.

How do you read the kanji 藍?

藍 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) らん; kun'yomi (native Japanese) あい.

How many strokes does 藍 have?

藍 is written with 18 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.

What level is the kanji 藍?

It appears at JLPT level N1, and Japanese schoolchildren learn it in secondary school.

What is the radical of 藍?

The radical of 藍 is 艸 (grass), radical number 140 of the 214 Kangxi radicals. The radical is the component a dictionary files the character under, and it usually points at the character's meaning.

What parts is the kanji 藍 made of?

藍 is built from 艹 (grass) and 監 (oversee). Learning kanji as combinations of a few hundred reusable components is far more efficient than memorising each character as a separate shape.

What words use the kanji 藍?

Common words written with 藍 include 伽藍 (がらん, temple (esp. large one); monastery; temple building); 藍綬褒章 (らんじゅほうしょう, Medal with Blue Ribbon); 二藍 (フタアイ, deep purple, reddish indigo).

Which kanji sound the same as 藍?

藍 shares a reading with 乱 (らん), 卵 (らん), 覧 (らん), 蘭 (らん), 嵐 (らん), among others. Same-sounding kanji are one of the most common sources of confusion in Japanese.

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