All about the kanji, part 5: 人

Understanding what 人 means is easy. The various readings should also be familiar: ひと is the standalone word 'person', and にん　and じん are common endings, にん as a counter (3人 = さんにん = three people) and じん as a nationality suffix (日本人　＝　にほんじん = Japanese person) or occupation suffix. I have yet to see the readings -と and -り in the wild.
When you combine it with the kanji from previous posts, you get some fairly logical results:

• 国人, pronounced くにびと (note how the ひ changes into a び), means 'indigenous person; inhabitant of a country'.
• 一人, 'one person', has the irregular pronunciation ひとり (I guess that's the -り reading) and is often followed by で to mean 'alone' (lit. 'with one person')
• 人日, not surprisingly, means 'person-day', as used in the office to estimate an amount of work

Other familiar words using this kanji are:

• 人気 (にんき）, 'popular', where 気 is a fairly vague word meaning 'spirit', 'mind', 'energy' etc.
• 外人 (がいじん), 'foreigner', which is marked (sens) for 'sensitive' because it can have a negative undertone.
• 主人 (しゅじん) meaning '(my) husband' or, with the honorary prefix ご-, ご主人 meaning '(someone else's) husband'　（主 means chief, lord, or master; they're no feminists, then).