As I now am committed to JLPT N3 and really need kanji work, I'm paying more attention to radicals. (I find that often I know kanji more by their shape/feel, plus context—some parts just sort of blur out, because from the initial visual impression it's pretty obvious. If I were asked to write the kanji from memory, I would have to piece it out and probably would get only the most salient parts right, the parts that have feeling-weight.)
雑 ゾウ; "miscellany (classification of Japanese poetry unrelated to the seasons or to love)". This last raises the question of a hierarchy of genres; there always is one, in the arts, but here zatsu is all that mess/noise that isn't refined poetry. It's fun to think of a magazine as not only a collection 集 of various documents 誌 shi but also a collection of low-culture noise 雑. (Compare a 週刊誌, a 専門誌, a 論文誌—publications that aren't 雑—vs a 漫画雑誌, a manga zasshi.**)
*Phonetically in the sense that phonemes tend to attach to the feels they name—mechakucha for all over the place, out of control—my hair is all mechakucha; or guttural, and other heavy /uh/ sounds, in English. Lithe, a lithe word to name litheness. Meek to name meekness. びっくり, which sounds surprised. Onomatopoeia, of course, like crack. キラキラ, どんどん, くしゅ.
*Having read many, many academic publications, I'd say manga often ranks higher in cultural value. I have a draft around here somewhere about 漫 and its related forms.
No comments:
Post a Comment