同じ発音、同じような意味、色々な漢字。。。日本語で何と言うかなぁ。

There must be a word for that effect I like so much, when several different kanji can be used to write a single phonetic group (or several similar phonetic groups). Here's another one: あらた (a・rata), meaning "new/anew" or "again". It can be written adjectivally as 新た, as in 新たな物 (arata na mono), in which case it's the same kanji as あたらしい 新しい atara・shii, "new". But then it can also appear as 改める arata・meru, meaning to do something again (anew). So this phonetic grouping of あらた (with, perhaps, あたら) carries several kanji relating to new instances of things. This seems similar to かれる kareru, one I've mentioned before:

枯れる / kareru / to be (as a plant) completely withered or dried out (tree + old)
涸れる / kareru / to dry up (as a pond) (water + hardening, solidifying)
嗄れる / kareru / to dry out or rasp out (as a voice); to become hoarse (mouth + summer)

Of course, it may be just coincidence; that's always a danger. I started thinking of かれる when I encountered 「涙もかれ果てて」 in a Miyuki Nakajima song. 果てる hateru has a similar meaning of reaching an extreme, being exhausted, perishing—when one has reached the point at which tears are dried up, exhausted (枯れ果てる). I suppose that must be 枯, because the others seem NGU (not-general-use), not 常用.

I guess in general many of them have been consolidated into 常用 kanji, the everyday kanji; too bad. Too bad. The older forms have a lot of charm and are suggestive historically. I wonder whether 日本人 still recognize and understand those older forms, and whether those forms still carry any shades of meaning.

単語についての本が着いた！

A thing I don't love about Genki is how it treats vocabulary—it tends to base its word list for each lesson on its dialogue and examples. That's great as far as it goes, but it results in what seems to me a very uneven treatment; there are some complex words (and kanji) that appear early in the series and some very basic words (like "tree" and "wind") that appear almost at the end, and at no point are the words grouped by theme for easier memorization and retention.

But—hopefully, problem solved! I've bought a book that groups vocab by theme—business, weather, math, art, religion, the home, food, geography, など—and, unlike a vocab book I've had a while but don't use at all because it's all in ローマ字, Western type, and I have no idea what the kanji are—it includes kana, kanji, and roumaji. 凄い.

ところで、my new favorite kanji is 輿 (かご、こし). It means a litter or a palanquin. I enjoy its symmetry.

之繞 (shin-nyou)。

I find the kanji radical shin-nyou, which appears in 70+ kanji and generally means movement or progression, really interesting. "Nyou" is just the type of radical, an "enclosure" radical that usually spans the left side and the bottom of the kanji. (Cf. hen, ashi, tsukuri, kamae, etc.) "Shin" is the really interesting part, because the originating kanji, 之, seems not to carry a pronunciation of "shin" or have anything to do with movement. In fact, it's one of those super kanji that stand in for particles or basic words, in this case の (possessive) and これ (this) (although in fact hiragana の derives from a totally different kanji, 乃). I suspect, but will have to verify later, that it's also the parent kanji of hiragana え. 面白いなぁ。

Addendum:　I've checked, and the parent of え is not 之, but 衣 (ころも/イ koromo/I), meaning, weirdly enough, either robes/clothing or some kind of bread-crumby batter coating. A Google image search for 衣 turned up an image of something that might be batter-coated...and about a million images of lingerie. (I don't think I've ever image-searched anything in Japanese and not gotten a slew of provocative images, but these seem actually to be related to ころも.) Funnily enough, a hiragana chart I checked shows an intermediate form between 衣 and え that looks a lot like 示すへん　shimesu・hen, the "altar" radical that appears in a ton of interesting kanji that are generally about religion, fortune, etc.

買ったばかりのカンジについての本！

I'm always looking things up in Henshall's excellent book, so I was pleased to find on Amazon another book exploring the wonders of kanji, Eve Kushner's Crazy for Kanji. I've only glanced through so far, but I'm loving it. Her approach is fresh and irreverent, and she emphasizes the connections among kanji and their sounds, parts, and meanings, as I sometimes have tried (with less success) to do here. She's also saying a lot about the importation of 漢字, the effects that had, and the relationship with earlier 和語 (wago, indigenous Japanese language), an area I've wanted to read much more about.* She also explores more subtle topics, such as what the use of kanji may suggest about Japanese culture and how the Japanese themselves feel about kanji. To boot, she includes a variety of quizzes and games that challenge the perception of kanji as one big, dark room.

I find it all no less daunting, but I'm stoked.

*For Japanese script reform, 国語国事問題, see eg here and here.

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.

申し訳。(moushiwake)

Another "click" happened this morning—a lame one, probably, but all progress is progress ね.

Polite formula 申し訳ありません moushiwake arimasen: used as an apology to superiors.

申す mousu: humble form of "to speak". 木の陰と申します = kinokage to moushimasu = (humbly) They call me Kinokage. (They don't, but it's just an example.)

訳 is one I usually use as ヤク YAKU, translating/translation:

この難しい日本語のテキストを訳してくれない？
kono muzukashii nihongo no tekisuto o yaku shite kurenai?
won't you translate this difficult Japanese text for me?

But 訳 is also わけ wake, a reason or explanation:

そういうわけで宿題をできなくちゃったんです。
sou iu wake de shukudai wo dekinakuchatta n desu.
That's why I couldn't do my homework. Sorry.

(I've never used わけで before, so I'm picking up that usage from Kotonba, though with a slightly changed example. I'm definitely not sure of できなくちゃった, but that shouldn't affect.)

So 申し訳ありません/ございません ≈ there is no call/reason to speak? I have nothing to say for myself?

Now I need to think about そう言う訳 and whether that links to 申し訳. It may be just a coincidence of usage that in both instances 訳 is preceded by a speech verb; そう言う may be there for other reasons, as in そう言うこと.

「でこぼこ」の漢字。 ("Dekoboko")

Some kanji are pretty easily understood, and some really obscure, but very rarely do we see kanji as on-the-nose as the kanji for でこぼこ (dekoboko), meaning a rough/uneven surface. Check this out:

凸　deko　convex.
凹　　boko　concave.

凸凹: it sticks up in some places and is rutted in others.

Yorokobi, ureshii. 喜 / 嬉.

So I've been walking around singing 「時代」 everywhere, and I've just realized that the kanji for ureshii is the same as that for yorokobi, but plus onna-hen. 喜 + 女 = 嬉. What's the difference between happiness and happiness-plus-woman-kanji? Is onna-hen meaningful here? Why does Nakajima choose yorokobi/kanashimi instead of ureshimi/kanashimi?

Kotoba lists four kanji you can use to write yorokobi:

喜び 慶び 歓び 悦び

So presumably よろこび predates the introduction of kanji and that reading was assigned to various kanji that fit the meaning. And maybe that explains the び ending: that's just how it was said at the time. (Or are there many nouns that end in び?)

漢字って、不思議なものですね。

Is ureshimi even a word? It doesn't seem to be, but it should be. Of course, its not being a word would explain Nakajima's not using it.

I need a second copy of the Henshall book to keep at the office.

Genki (元気).

Genki (元気), the word/phrase, pleases me for its optimism: gen (元), the original, the root, and ki (気), the spirit/energy. お元気ですか？o-genki desu ka? Is your energy where it's supposed to be? Probably the understanding of it is no longer so literal, and possibly the kanji were retro-fitted to the spoken language, but for me it works.

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

今日の漢字: Kanji: 連 (れん、ren)

Exploring 連 (ren) today. It's about continuity, carrying along. Pretty soon in shuuji we'll start learning renmen 連綿, the style of connecting hiragana written with kofude into continuous lines. (綿 is actually わた, cotton.) The 部首 (radicals) are しんにゅう (shinnyuu) again and 車, kuruma, a vehicle, so a (continuously) moving vehicle. Ren. Lots of compounds involving 連 are about alliance or continuity:

- 連濁 れんだく rendaku, voicing the initial consonant of a word when it's used in a compound

- 連合 れんごう rengou, an alliance or union

- 連続 れんぞく renzoku, continuously, consecutively (続 being 続ける　つずける tsuzukeru, to continue doing) (変: although this is adverbial and ends in く, the く seems integral to the 音読み reading, so I assume usage would be 連続に.)

- 関連 かんれん kanren, relevance/connection, both kanji reinforcing

- 連絡　れんらく renraku, contacting (連絡する)

- 国連 こくれん kokuren, the United Nations (国 being a country)

連 seems usually to be read as れん (ren), but it also can be つら (tsura), as in 連ねる (to link or join) and 連れる (つれる、to take/lead someone). The つら uses are sometimes doubled by the kanji 列, also レン, as in 列なる, つらなる, to extend / stretch out. Hmm.

面白い: Per Kotoba, 連 also was a title of high nobility, むらじ (muraji).

Next up will be 残, as in both 残業 and 残念. 面白い漢字だね。

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.

今日の一番好きな言葉。

飛ばされる, tobasareru. Saw it in the Murray book; he defines it as to be blown away. To・bu (飛ぶ), flying, is a kanji I'm working on in shuuji. It's the third down in the image at right. (The others are kei and un/kumo; 景雲飛 is a group of three that I've been doing, though so far only in kaisho.)

The plethora of syllables in tobasareru makes me think that maybe this is tobu being wrung through a tense or two that I haven't learned yet. Something causative or passive or causative-passive. I've tried manipulating tobu into something that might work, but so far no luck. There's a passive feel to it, like suru/sareru, that suggests being an unwilling participant in flight.

That's something I don't yet understand well, like wataru vs watasu or okiru and okosu—the -ru form meaning acting for oneself and the -su form meaning acting upon someone else. I feel that there's a pattern there that I'll be really glad to know about once I do.

So, I guess,
橋を渡る, cross bridge
橋が渡れる, bridge can be crossed
橋が渡られる, bridge is crossed
橋を渡す, be conveyed across bridge

渡られる, be crossed, 渡す, be carried across

Now I'm confused, because a page I was just reading about the passive form says that you can passivize ichidan verbs by changing the final u to a and adding -reru. But doesn't that create the potential form? Eg, 食べる / 食べられる—am I saying that a thing is edible or that it's eaten (by some unspecified agent)?

Hmm.

面白い漢字の点の書き方。 (Interesting shodou.)

右の漢字：　遊、楽
中の：　花、心、愉
左の：　咲、頑？

だれが買いたか分からないけど。　Interesting way of forming dots (点). If that's 頑, どうしてんでしょうかな。　

Loving this one:

サイトによると「命名書」と言うことなんだ。僕はまあまあに読めるけど、実は分からない。

に付いて?

今日は涼しくて晴れて素晴らしい。いい天気ですから、散歩しましょう。

Thinking about について, ni tsuite, "about". Do you suppose it's derived from 付く (tsuku)? I can see a rationale for it. Tsuku is one of those verbs that keep appearing where you don't expect them, like kakeru. (Depending on kanji, kakeru can be about running, hanging, telephoning, betting, flying....) Generally tsuku is about sticking or attaching, 林檎についての質問がある。I have a question attached/connected to apples. I suspect tsuku is also behind the "included" sense of "one night, two meals" in hotel vocabulary.

Of course, depending on kanji, tsuku can also be about stabbing, haunting, immersing, pounding rice....

ADDENDUM: Reviewing vocab from Genki ch. 17. Turns out かける can also mean getting a perm. There's just nothing that verb can't do.

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.

ありがとう/ 有難う (arigatou).

Yesterday a friend was asking me whether arigatou is written with kanji or kana. I said I'd never seen it in kanji but assumed that at one point kanji were associated with it, whether for meaning or just for pronunciation.

Turns out the old kanji are a good match for meaning: 有難う,　有 being to be or exist and 難 the same kanji as for 難しい, difficult. 有り難い / 有難い is apparently an adjective that involves gratitude, but it's a new one to me. Can anyone explain how 有難い becomes 有難う? Can other -い adjectives use -おう? Eg, does 違おう mean anything? 暖こう? 寒おう？ 若う？食べとう？ Or is there no pattern here?

ADDENDUM: Google does show examples of 暖こうございます and 食べとうおざる. If there is an -ou form, maybe it refers to a state that the speaker is or was in.

ADDENDUM 2: According to this,

The "ou" ending comes from the conjunction of the adjectival arigataku with the polite verb gozaimasu.... Other common examples of this type of conjugation include omedetou gozaimasu (congratulations) from medetaku and ohayou gozaimasu (good morning) from hayaku. The word arigatai existed in Japanese long before the Japanese ever encountered Portuguese. It can be found in some of the earliest Japanese literature such as the manyoushuu....

Now, if I can just figure out why a -く form would precede である....

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.