Sound equivalent in Japanese


I recently found out emoji comes from the japanese characters e (meaning
picture) and moji (meaning character).

What would the equivalent be for the japanese character meaning sound?

I tried using google translate but I was suspicious after I tried to find the
english equivalent of picture and it gave me something other than e. But when
i do Japanese to english with e it did give me picture in English.




I reread your question and thought I would retrace your steps. Yes, the
translation that Google Translate gives for the word _sound_ is correct in the
character 音 pronounced おと( _oto_ ).

However, using Google Translate to look up a word or meaning of a character is
generally a bad idea because there are things that it cannot translate well.
If you put "Picture" in English, you might have gotten 画像 ( _gazou_ , which
translates better as _image_ ) which is not nearly as common a word as 写真 (
_shashin_ , for _photograph_ ) or 絵 ( _e_ , for _illustration_ )... There are
definitely some nuances it is no good at capturing. As you can see, these are
synonyms with a degree of non-overlap that can all be translated as _picture_.

I also have to give the disclaimer: 音 is a 漢字 ( _kanji_ ), and how it is used
in Japanese, that character 音 can be read in more than one way. The meaning
won't change, but depending on whether it forms part of another word, the
sound used to represent it can be different. This is a whole section of study
in Japanese that can take years to master. However, 音 on its own IS read
おと(oto).

That being said, I do suggest you look
[**here**](https://japanese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/756/resources-
for-learning-japanese/761#761) to look up dictionaries and resources that can
help you find other words you have curiosity about. In general, the link has
good resources to get you started if you care to learn more of the Japanese
language.




I reread your question and thought I would retrace your steps. Yes, the
translation that Google Translate gives for the word _sound_ is correct in the
character 音 pronounced おと( _oto_ ).

However, using Google Translate to look up a word or meaning of a character is
generally a bad idea because there are things that it cannot translate well.
If you put "Picture" in English, you might have gotten 画像 ( _gazou_ , which
translates better as _image_ ) which is not nearly as common a word as 写真 (
_shashin_ , for _photograph_ ) or 絵 ( _e_ , for _illustration_ )... There are
definitely some nuances it is no good at capturing. As you can see, these are
synonyms with a degree of non-overlap that can all be translated as _picture_.

I also have to give the disclaimer: 音 is a 漢字 ( _kanji_ ), and how it is used
in Japanese, that character 音 can be read in more than one way. The meaning
won't change, but depending on whether it forms part of another word, the
sound used to represent it can be different. This is a whole section of study
in Japanese that can take years to master. However, 音 on its own IS read
おと(oto).

That being said, I do suggest you look
[**here**](https://japanese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/756/resources-
for-learning-japanese/761#761) to look up dictionaries and resources that can
help you find other words you have curiosity about. In general, the link has
good resources to get you started if you care to learn more of the Japanese
language.

