蛙 | wā

In Mandarin Chinese, 蛙 (Pinyin: wā 🔊) is a word for frog.

According to Wiktionary, 蛙 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 虫 (“insect; creature”) and phonetic 圭 which, in turn, is a duplication of our old friend 土. Now, English speakers think the frog goes “ribbit” (🔊). But this is only because of Baja California chorus frog who happen to live near Hollywood. For Dutch, frogs go “kwaak kwaak”, for Russians — “ква-ква” and for Chinese — 呱呱 (wā wā). If you remember “wā wā”, you’ll remember “wā” too.

Does 蛙 look like a frog? Not really, not to me. Look, here’s a frog:

And here’s a sailboat pursuing, er, two smaller boats:

In Japanese, 蛙 is pronounced kaeru (🔊) or, in poetry, kawazu. Here’s probably the most famous haiku ever:

古池や 蛙飛こむ 水の音 芭蕉 Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto The old pond; A frog jumps in, — The sound of the water. Bashō

I used the classic translation by R.H. Blyth; if you don’t like it, there are at least thirty-one others.

More photos related to frogs, calligraphy and sea glass @ Shutterstock.