Winter is not just about holidays, but also about recapitulations of the year’s achievements and mishaps, as well as announcement of words & kanjis of the year. The kanji of the year (今年の漢字, Kotoshi no Kanji) is chosen by the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society through a national ballot in Japan. Since 1995, each year, one character representing the events of that year is announced in a ceremony on December 12 (Kanji Day) at Kiyomizu Temple. This year’s kanji is 新 (shin, new) and is supposed to illustrate the win of the Democratic Party in Japan’s elections after almost 54 years of unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.
On a similar note, American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year 2009 (often miscalled Oxford Word of the Year) is unfriend, a seemingly pessimistic word very characteristic of this year’s explosion of social networks. The words selected by Germany, Switzerland & The Webster’s Dictionary are much less modernistic; Hartz IV (the name given to the financial support for the long-term unemployed), Minarettverbot (minaret ban) and distracted driving respectively.
