Comments on: Spotting The Hidden Meanings Hiding Within Animal Kanji

By: ragu.u

ragu.u — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 06:43:00 +0000

In my grandfather’s dialect, 烏 is used to mean black, instead of 黑 like in most Chinese dialects.

By: ragu.u

ragu.u — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 06:42:00 +0000

Either of them can be used. Both came from Chinese, 烏鴉/乌鸦 (wūyā). Just like how 赤 means red, 烏 can also mean black, at least in Classical Chinese, like how a crow/ raven is black. That’s why there are Chinese words such as Oolong tea: 烏龍茶 meaning “black”+”dragon”+”tea”. (Japanese reading: うーろんちゃ; Alternative word: ウーロン茶) In any case, I think it’s also acceptable to use カラス. It’s strange though that in Japan, China and Korea, the word for black tea is 紅茶. :/ The character for black in Chinese and Japanese is 黑/ 黒. The latter character is Japanese. Notice how the dots are replaced by a line. Added info: a crow is a general term for a wide range of birds but most if not all ravens are considered crows.

By: ThunderWhales_Picnic

ThunderWhales_Picnic — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:52:00 +0000

Actually, pretty much all of these are simply folk etymologies. Most Chinese characters for plants/animals are phonosemantic compounds (which in fact comprise the vast majority of Chinese characters in general), with one component related to the meaning of the character (the semantic component, i.e. 虫 in 蚊) while the other is a character that approximates the pronunciation of the word (the phonetic component, i.e. 文 in 蚊) and usually has no semantic significance. It’s important to keep in mind that these characters were invented in order to record the Chinese language as spoken 2000+ years ago, and seeing as the Chinese writing system underwent (surprisingly) few modifications during its adoption by the Japanese, it would be misguided to attempt to examine the etymology of Chinese characters through the framework of modern Japanese. To learn more about the actual etymology and history of Chinese characters, I would suggest looking at Wikipedia’s article on Chinese character classification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phono-semantic#Phono-semantic_compound_characters

By: ダルマ

ダルマ — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:13:00 +0000

So that’s why Pokémon say their own names in the anime.

By: François-Xavier Thomas

François-Xavier Thomas — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 07:14:00 +0000

Awesome post as usual, thanks for reminding me why I like the Japanese language so much : so many hidden meanings! My brain is happy and well-fed now! :)

By: jgharston

jgharston — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 04:58:00 +0000

Ooo. Baby talk! Just like moo-cow, baa-sheep, erm… I think that’s it ;)