Kanji quizzes for the joy of reading
How do you read 燕 in Japanese?
Small wings sweep past the eaves.
Make the words you meet in books your own, one quiz at a time. Discover Japanese kanji readings, meanings and usage with DuraRing.
Unfamiliar kanji? Scan and look it up.Explore the OCR & AI dictionaryHow do you read this in Japanese?
Read this as the Japanese name of a bird seen in spring.
HINTShow hint
A bird with a forked tail that nests under house eaves.
More on radicals and this quiz’s stroke counts
Describe the shapes you see
You do not need to know the radical’s name. Try these searches for this quiz’s characters.
bird name kanji with four dots below
16 stroke kanji with 口 and four dots below
one kanji for a bird nesting under eaves
These searches describe visual similarities, not formal radicals or character components.
燕 has 16 strokes and the radical 火 (fire). Radicals are dictionary classifications. The shape-based search phrases below provide other lookup clues.
燕16 strokes / radical: 火 (fire)
Stroke counts and radicals follow the Japanese dictionary Kanjipedia; other dictionaries may differ.
ANSWERShow answerHide answer
The answer is
つばめ
tsubame
燕
Understand the meaning
English translationSwallow
A swallow, a small bird with a long forked tail that catches insects in flight. It is commonly seen in Japan in spring and summer.
See it in a sentence
軒先の巣へ、燕がすばやく戻ってきた。A swallow darted back to its nest beneath the eaves.
A way to remember
The bird is tsubame. Its dictionary radical is 火, not 鳥; look for the four dots at the bottom.
Sources：Kanjipedia: 燕
The explanation draws on the sources below. Examples were written for this page.
Explore the word further
Using 燕
燕が飛ぶ and 燕が巣を作る describe the bird in action. Specifying one bird or several makes the scene more precise.
例：軒先の巣へ戻る燕を、子どもたちは静かに見守った。
The children quietly watched the swallow return to its nest under the eaves.
Reading and meaning in context
The bird-name reading here is つばめ. The character also has other uses, including a historical state name, so context matters.
References for this explanation：Kanjipedia: 燕
Explanation checked on 2026-10-23. Additional examples were written by DuraRing for this page.
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