Every now and then while studying I come across something that’s so insanely stupid I will always remember it- like people I’ve talked to who said the only Japanese they could ever remember is the counter for chickens （わ） or Tamara, who despite being vegetarian knows the international sign language symbol for abattoir. These things just seem so useless that you always remember them, mainly because of their uselessness.
I do this with characters in Japanese (by characters I mean letters). You see I tend to isolate seperate parts of characters to remember them individually. So I can remember older sister (姉) is the character for woman/female (女）and the character for city （市） Therefore an older sister lives in the city. Same with 妹 which means younger sister…although I remember that mainly because I remember older sister.
But then 女 pops up in some really weird characters. For instance 安 means cheap, 安全 means safe (there was a great moment in Tokyo when I saw a taxi from a company called 安全タクシー dart across three lanes of traffic and turn left through a red light without indicating. Really living up to its name)
furthermore 好 means to like, or be fond of (the two characters smooshed together are woman and child) and the one that I just realised today (because I mustn’t have been looking before, or I just saw the characters together for the first time) is 始- which means begin. Its made of 女 and 台、which means very big, and is also the counter for cars and large pieces of machinery.
It makes no sense I know. This country is messing with my mind.
June 15, 2008 at 6:08 pm
If you think that’s weird, have a look at what happens when you write 女 three times. The independent meaning’s kind of weird:
奸; 姦 【かん】 (n,adj-na) cunning and wickedness; cunning, wicked person
…but when you look at the compounds you find it in, the rabbit hole just deepens and deepens. I’d post a list here, but it’s kinda like the matrix – you have to see it for yourself.
July 21, 2008 at 5:12 pm
hi,
your conclusions regarding kanji are somewhat incorrect. many kanji are made up of meaning part (radical) + pronunciation part. the reason the characters seem to make no sense in japanese is because the pronunciation part refers to the CHINESE pronunciation. if you learned a bit of chinese, you’d find that, actually, kanji (or han4 zi4 in chinese) are almost always logical. for example, the “city” in older sister has nothing to do with the meaning “city”: the reason there is a “city” in there is because the chinese pronunciation sounds like the chinese character “city”. (actually, it would be more correct to define this as market, not city).
good luck with your kanji practice!
July 24, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Ha, true- I don’t think I arrived at any conclusions, so much as confusions/thoughts. And Chinese is on my list of languages to learn- quite high actually…but Japanese and French are higher!
And as for older sister, hey, it’s allowed me to remember that character, so it can’t hurt (I remember the pronunciation because my older sister’s name is Anne)
It’s probably not the best way but it works…