First opened Tuesday, May 24, 2005
文字
もんじ
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
letter (of alphabet), character
Monji is from Middle Chinese 文字, literally “writing + character”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
- “From Middle Chinese 文字 (MC mjun dziH, literally “writing + character”). Compare modern Cantonese reading man⁴ zi⁶.”
Source: Wiktionary: 文字 (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
Other readings of 文字 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not もんじ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
もじ
- “/mond͡ʑi/ → /mod͡ʑi/”
- “Sound shift from monji above.”
What the labels mean
- 漢語 Sino-Japanese
- Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.