漢字： 「翻訳」の「翻」。 (What's the "hon" in "hon'yaku"?)

It's bothering me that I don't know what the hon in hon'yaku (translation) means; I always just use 訳 yaku (訳す、訳する). So let's find out. ちょっと調べてみよう。。。。

Well, that's ランドム. Kotoba gives two kanji, 翻 and 飜, and grays out the former, though apparently only the former is 常用 (Jouyou, common-use: school grade 8, JLPT level 1). Both mean "to flip over", and they share a hen of topped-rice and rice-field; in 翻 the tsukuri is 羽 (hane, feathers/wings), and in 飜 it's our old friend 飛 (tobu, to fly).

Not clear to me how either of these relates to translation, but maybe it's phonetic. I'll check Henshall先生 later.

漢字：列・なる、例・えば、烈、裂。

The kanji 列 (レ, レツ, RETSU) is also of interest because although it means a row/column/rank/file, if you add ninben (the 人 radical in the hen position, on the left) you get 例 (たと/レイ), an example.

(And now 例えば is making me think of conditional forms and なぜなら. たとえる, to give an example? たとえば, if an example were given.... なぜなら、　if you want to know why.... ほかの同様な表現があるかなあ。)

But in 列 and 例 we have those bones again, just as in 残 (ザン, ZAN). And cutting.　Henshall先生 explains that once (昔々) there was a strict sequence to dismembering a carcass (cutting it to the bone), one task after another, and that adding ninben led to people in a row and thus comparisons and somehow examples. (Henshall includes among the meanings of 例 likening and precedents.) So, 例外 レイガイ, reigai, outside of precedent—an exception.

Searching Saiga's kanji dictionary and Kotoba for all containing those two 部首 (bushu, radicals) yields a few other kanji:

• 烈 (RETSU. 列 with the fire radical) meaning violence/intensity
• 裂 (RETSU, sa・ku, sa・keru, 列 with the clothing radical), meaning severing/cleaving or bursting. Per Henshall, this originally referred to cutting cloth (in sequence), and then to rending cloth, and then to splitting or bursting other things. 凄い。

Kotoba adds eight more to the list, mostly with on'yomi of RETSU/RECHI/REI and no meaning given. With radical sansui, it's mayo・i, pure. With kusakanmuri, it's ashinoho, sedges. With kuchihen, a mouth, it's (not surprisingly) a gaping or stretched mouth, a grimace.

Anyway, so it makes sense that 列 might double for 連 sometimes, when the sense is linking/joining/continuity/sequence/succession—which is the question that got us thinking about RETSU in the first place. I guess it must have been chosen for meaning and then picked up the reading of つら・なる from existing spoken language.

面白い: Henshall gives as an example (例) the compound 烈女 (RETSUJO), a heroine, a furious/intense woman. Among the possibilities for "hero/protagonist", nothing seems to use 烈.

変：　Just looked up 例える (tatoeru), and the dictionary says it's "to compare". So there's once again that idea of comparison that Henshall says somehow evolved from ranks of people/soldiers. I kinda see how comparing might mesh with examples, but...実は。。。。

今日の漢字: 残 (ザン、のこ・る、そこな・う) ZAN.

今週の水曜日に日本語の先生に会えなちゃった。会社で残業しなくちゃいけなかったんだ。本当に残念だったよ。それじゃあ、「残」の漢字をちょっと勉強しよう。This week I missed my Japanese lesson because I had to work late (残業). That was disappointing (残念), but it did lead me to notice that both overtime and disappointing use the kanji, 残 (ザン). Hmm.

音読み：　ザン、サン (ZAN, SAN)
訓読み：　のこ・る、のこ・す、そぞな・う (noko・ru, noko・su, sozona・u)

Kotoba says 残 means remainder/leftover/balance, so 残業 (zangyou) makes sense as "work-beyond-work". 残念 (zannen) as regret/disappointment is less clear, since 念 seems not to have particularly negative connotations.

Henshall's explanation of this is really compelling: that "muchness/overness" either is a borrowed meaning (though from what, he doesn't say) or derives from an earlier sense of cruelty/brutality/excess. The hen radical is bare bone / death, as in shi・nu (死). In the tsukuri there's clearly a halberd (as in, eg, na・ru 成), which Henshall says is doubled for emphasis. So, says Henshall, cutting to the bone, cutting beyond the extent necessary for death—with, um, a halberd. That's certainly my experience of 残業.

So, 残 has several 訓読み forms, inluding -る and -す:

- 残・る, nokoru, to stay behind or to remain
- 残・す, nokosu, to leave behind
- 残らず, nokorazu, completely/without exception

Aligns with, eg, 渡る/渡す—る performing action on oneself vs す on something/someone else. So could we say 夕食を食べた後で、食べなかった料理が少なかった? Also need to look into that -らず adverbial form; is there a pattern?

Kotoba also lists a 訓読み of そこな・う; 字引によると, the meaning is to injure/mar/spoil, or to fail to do something, but その言葉の漢字は違う。The kanji is different. (Also, per dictionary entry, the kanji used in that sokonau is not そこな・う but そこ・なう. A borrowed meaning?)

A few more compounds / other uses of 残:

- 残酷, zankoku, cruelty/harshness
- 残らず, nokorazu, completely, without exception
- 名残り, nanokori, remains or vestiges
- 生き残り, ikinokori, survivor
- 残金, zankin, remaining cash

Interesting that it carries not only the sense of excess, but also the sense of leaving excess behind—or, a separation between an amount that's active/relevant and a smaller amount that's not. In the shipwreck most passengers die, but there are a few 生き残り. The ancient civilization is no more, but local people still find 名残り.

PS: There does seem to be a pattern with -らず, so I'll look into that next. 残業 very much. :-D

Kanji: 駄.

「駄目」の駄と「下駄」の駄は同じ漢字だみたい。面白い。どうしてんだろう？　

The radicals are a horse (馬へん) and fat/thick (太い)。先生 told me that often kanji that share a tsukuri will also share the 音読み of that tsukuri—so I think TA must come from 太.

ヘンシャー先生の本に調べよう*。。。。 Couldn't easily find in Henshall because it's filed as DA, a reading that I thought was primarily rendaku; Henshall doesn't even include TA. But Kotoba is very well cross-referenced and leads me to Henshall 1541.

Kotoba gives a primary meaning of burdensome, and the compounds it lists tend to be about foolishness/worthlessness or shoddiness. Henshall says it means a pack-horse, written with 太　or 大, and that because pack-horses were cheap it took on that meaning, too.

So do you suppose geta is written 下駄 because geta are under you and support your weight, or because they're under you and they're cheap? 「駄目」の表現の場合には、よく使う言葉だから、漢字の意味か音が重要だかも知れない。 I guess the sense of foolishness works, but 目 may be there just phonetically.

Here's something fun I discovered while looking up 駄目: damemoto (駄目元)—which Kotoba defines as giving something a try because one has nothing to lose. 「する」と使われるかなあ。**

*Originally I was going to use 相談する instead of 調べる, but I couldn't decide on "を相談する" or "二相談する".
**That's me trying to use the passive form of 使う. 駄目元したね。

Google has let me down; 下駄を張っている動物の写真がないんだ。

Another thing I like about kanji.

I like using the meanings of radicals (部首) to build spurious mnemonics.* 例えば、susumu (進む), to advance/to progress: the kanji radicals are shinnyou, meaning forward movement, and something else (in the tsukuri position) meaning a bird. I tend to associate shinnyou with roads (道) rather than with movement more generally, so, There's a bird in the road; move on.

凄い—per Henshall先生, shinnyou is actually tomaru（止まる)! Never made that connection before, but it makes sense, sort of. Stopping-へん is actually movement-へん.

この漢字の部首の試験によると、つくりは「ふるとり」と言う部首だ。That quiz on radicals says the tsukuri is called furutori. No kanji in the name in the quiz, but I assume とり is 鳥, and I suppose ふる (furu) may be 古い, antiquated, as in the old way of writing 鳥.

*If a mnemonic can be spurious.

Sugiru (過ぎる）.

That line 時過ぎて has me thinking. I've always heard of 過ぎる as meaning going beyond or too much, but now I see that it can also mean passing, as in time. Henshall先生 says the kanji depicts movement (the radical shinnyuu/shinnyou) and vertebrae, with some uncertainty about the kuchi. He says the tsukuri carried a phonetic sense of substantiality.

Kanji: 振 (fu・ru/SHIN).

A thing I really like about studying Japanese is that kanji, though maddening, are endlessly intriguing. I'm constantly encountering new kanji that suddenly fit into three or four other spaces and create a kind of resonance, and though it underscores my ignorance it's also exciting and satisfying.

例えば—not to belabor the Meiko Kaji song, but—振り向いたの振の漢字。Turns out it's the same ふり as in 振袖, furisode, the dressy young-woman's kimono with "swinging sleeves" (pictured at right; click to enlarge). To me, swinging and turning/facing are pretty different, but しょがないだろうね.

Similarly, 振り向いたの向の漢字。。。。"muku" is the same "mu" as mukou (向こう), meaning opposite, as on the other side of the street, or meaning beyond, as in right down there past the brick building. Or mukau (向かう), to face (toward) something, and muki (向き), orientation. I hypothesized that 向 might also appear in mukashi, as in a long time ago (like beyond remembering), but not so; that's a single kanji without okurigana, 昔 (むかし). 「言葉」の携帯アップリによると, 「昔」の漢字はたくさん熟語が使う。All have something to do with the distant past. Maybe it's a case of inconsistent assignment of kanji to existing words; maybe "mukashi" and "mukou" are related etymologically in Japanese spoken language but now are expressed in unrelated kanji. Or maybe not. かも知れないね。

会社の自分の「ヘンシャー」が要ると思う。

ADDENDUM: Kotoba says that 振る also carries several other meanings, including that of changing heading or direction. So I guess 振り向いた makes sense as a double-kanji item emphasizing the turning around (to see、川に, the 旅の灯 go off into the distance). If I can assume the subject is inverted again (as in 行く女).（命の道を行っている女は）振り向いた。川に、旅の灯が遠ざかる（のを見た). Not so sure about the tenses there. Hmm.

Kanji: 足りるの漢字 / 当て字。

足りるの漢字は、どうして足のと同じだかな。　Why does "to suffice" use the kanji for "leg"? ヘンシャーの漢字についての本によると、。。。。でもちょっと待って、まずヘンシャーの本を探す。。。。

見つけた。　According to Henshall先生, tariru (to suffice, 足りる) and ashi ([lower] leg/foot, 足) use the same kanji because ashi was picked up for phonetic reasons and also (as an intact leg) may have suggested ability. Not so satisfying. Not sure whether this qualifies as ateji, kanji used phonetically rather than semantically -- like when I tried to make the kanji 本当 (root, striking right on) into "truth" through meanings -- reasonable, I think! -- when in fact it's probably to at least some degree phonetic match, ateji. Maybe that's a classic example, because 当　is apparently also the a in ateji (当て字). でも実は「足りる」の漢字の説明はちょっと足らないと思う。