chai@utflis.UUCP (H. Chai) (12/19/85)
In article <839@h-sc1.UUCP> breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) writes: >Chinese characters (Kanji) are >composed from a relatively small number of constituents (radicals) with >semantic and phonetic content. From the radicals present in a Chinese >character, one can often not only derive its meaning, but also its >pronounciation. Well, Thomas, seeing your extensive bibliography at the end of the article, I'm surprised that you made such a general statement which is often untrue. Even in the Chinese language itself, trying to guess a character's meaning and pronunciation from its radicals is often unsafe and incorrect. The problem doubles with Japanese kanji because sometimes the original Chinese pronunciation is preserved, but often the kanji is used (or borrowed) for its meaning only and its pronunciation bears no relation to the kanji. For example, 'ido bata kaigii' means "gossip"; the kanji used consists of four characters, meaning '(water)well top conference' in Chinese. The Chinese pronunciation for conference is approx. 'wui-ee', so is more or less preserved in 'kaigii'. But 'ido bata' is Japanese in origin, and to guess its pronunciation form the kanji would be completely fruitless. Another trap is that sometimes the kanji used in a word bore no relation to what they meant in Chinese. My favorite example: 'benkyo', to study/learn, uses the two Chinese characters (and their pronunciation) that mean to do something unwilling, or forcing someone to do something unwilling. (well, you could say there is a very strong realtionship there :-) Being of Chinese origin and having studied Japanese, I can claim I am more aware of the probelms involved in learing the latter language when it borrows so much from Chinese. -- Henry Chai, just a humble student at the Faculty of Library and Information Science, U of Toronto {watmath,ihnp4,allegra}!utzoo!utflis!chai
breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) (12/22/85)
> In article <839@h-sc1.UUCP> breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) writes: > >Chinese characters (Kanji) are > >composed from a relatively small number of constituents (radicals) with > >semantic and phonetic content. From the radicals present in a Chinese > >character, one can often not only derive its meaning, but also its > >pronounciation. > > Well, Thomas, seeing your extensive bibliography at the end of the > article, I'm surprised that you made such a general statement which is > often untrue. Even in the Chinese language itself, trying to guess a > character's meaning and pronunciation from its radicals is often unsafe > and incorrect. The problem doubles with Japanese kanji because > sometimes the original Chinese pronunciation is preserved, but often > the kanji is used (or borrowed) for its meaning only and its > pronunciation bears no relation to the kanji. For example, 'ido bata > kaigii' means "gossip"; the kanji used consists of four characters, > meaning '(water)well top conference' in Chinese. The Chinese > pronunciation for conference is approx. 'wui-ee', so is more or less > preserved in 'kaigii'. But 'ido bata' is Japanese in origin, and to > guess its pronunciation form the kanji would be completely fruitless. I did not intend to imply that you can read or understand a Japanese text if you only know radicals but have never learned the Kanji. Similarly, a knowledge of all English roots, suffixes, and prefixes would not allow you to read or understand an English text. I just wanted to point out that the Japanese writing system does not consist of a few thousand unrelated characters, but that it also contains a lot of semantic and phonetic information, just like the English writing system. This doesn't help you very much if you encounter an unknown Kanji, but I find it of great mnemonic value that certain radicals have certain meanings or suggest certain pronounciations. Thomas.