Question, Ask

Interesting Fact

The kanji 問 is over 3,000 years old, and its original picture was surprisingly literal. It showed a mouth (口) inside a gate (門). Imagine someone standing outside a large city gate, calling out to the guard inside: "May I come in?" or "Who's there?" Since people often had to speak through gates to get answers, this picture gradually came to mean asking a question. Thousands of years later, the ancient scene is still preserved in the shape of 問.