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Kanji etymology

ryuurui

品天龍涙
17 Jul 2010
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It is a new project I am involved in. I plan on introducing all of the 常用漢字. I hope I can keep up the pace of 3 posts (i.e. 3 kanji) a week.

My first post is here, let me know what do you think.
Kanji: 一

I realize that there are many publications and websites on the subject. Unfortunately many of them are commercialised and erroneous. My articles are based on several calligraphy dicionaries, including two 篆書大字典 (one of them received the Imperial Cultural Reward), and 書道大辞典 published either by 角川, 二玄社 or similar houses specialising in calligraphy books, as well as my personal knowledge gathered during 10 years of studies of calligraphy under one of the most renowend masters in Kantou area. The most valuable source of information in my posssession, however, are fantastic and insanely detailed woks of 白川 静 who is possibly the most famous Japanese authority in the field of the etymology of Chinese characters. He spent his entire life on doing nothing but that, and lived 96 years.

If anyone is interested in daily updates on the above or my other calligraphy related projecs, you may follow me on twitter: @Ponte_Ryuurui

Comments and suggestions are welcome!
 
I noticed a typo: 經 is jing1, not jin.

That's pretty extensive, though. Impressive. 👍
 
I noticed a typo: テ」S is jing1, not jin.

Well spotted, many thanks, Glenn, i have just fixed that. This also gave me an idea to add the tones to the Chinese readings, for those who study both languages, just like you did above.

Yes, it would seem that the long winter nights, will not be so long after all. It may take some time to finish, but I find it absolutely fascinating to read about where the characters actually came from. I will copy-paste the links to my further posts in here, if that is OK.

Thanks again!
 
I hope this is not a stupid question, but what is the "Japanese names" section for (as distinct from "Kunyomi")?
 
It's a good question, actually. In fact it may be quite puzzling for those who have just begun to study kanji.

Chinese characters have many different readings. In Japanese there are three of them, or four, depending how you look at it (on, kun, names and special readings, but the last group belongs to the kun readings). Name readings are used for the names only. Some kanji are used in female or male names exclusively, and some are ... how shall i put it ... metrosexual :D. If we go deeper, some kanji are used as prefixes only and other as suffixes, etc. Names sounds differ (in most cases) from "on" and "kun".
 
Hello,
Me I am a beginner,I know nothing about Japanese language;I need to know how to begin studying Japanese.What are the basic issues?
 
I guess the best way to go is either to find a teacher, or some good course online, or a decent book for beginners. There are plenty of threads on this forum regarding the initial steps, so you may want to browse the forum, too.
 
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Couple things on 学, both about Mandarin tones:

說文解字 is shuo1 wen2 jie3 zi4
說文解字
注音一式 ㄕㄨㄛ ㄨㄣˊ ㄐ|ㄝˇ ㄗˋ
漢語拼音 shuo1 wen2 jie3 zi4

智永 is Zhi4 Yong3
智永
注音一式 ㄓˋ ㄩㄥˇ
漢語拼音 zhi4 yong3
Source for both: 教育部《重編國語辭典修訂本》2021 (but you'll have to look them up yourself; direct links go dead after a short period for some reason)

MDBG agrees.

How long does it take you to look all this stuff up, anyway? And where are you getting it from? That's a lot of information, man. 👍
 
Cheers, @Glenn . This post caused us a lot of trouble, as the kanji ああ was causing us some major issues with the HTML code. So it is possible that my friend who is in charge of the binary magic used the unedited version of the post. I have to go through it once again.

It depends on the article. The 学 took me about 10h to write, or more, plus another 2h on selecting pcitures of ancient script. There are so many kani variants and calligraphy forms, that it sometimes takes a lot of time to choose the right ones. Also, after i pick them i need to find out who wrote it and when, and research that as well.

The texts I am working with are either in Chinese, or historical Japanese, even though they are modern books. Simply, people who wrote them were scholars who read so much of the ancient scripts, that by the force of habit they wrote using old grammar. Further, the terminology they use is very compact (to save space in books), and lots of abbreviations appear that may be very misleading. This requires cross reference checking, which task is very time consuming, but terribly exciting, too, plus I learn a lot while doing it.

My main source is the book of 白川 静 "字統", which is difficult to understand even for native speakers. Sometimes, in order to comprehend one sentence I need to take one hour. His book is a real mind bender. 白川 静 is considered the greatest authority on kanji etymology in Japan. I wish I could meet him, but he sadly passed away in 2006.

Then I have a fantastic dictionary 角川漢和中辞典 (1959年), 貝塚 茂樹, et al., recommended to my by my teacher. I also use around 12 calligraphy dictionaries. For additional research I use internet, especially to read up on things that I wish to know more about. There is lots of good information on the net, but it is not easy to find, so sometimes the research takes a lot of time.
I also have a rather large collection of books on calligraphy, both in English and Japanese, so they serve as supportive lecture.

I have just finished working on next kanji, which is 気. It looked so simple, yet took me two days to crack the case. Little devil...

Last comes my personal knowledge, gathered during 10 years of studying calligraphy, without which, I would not be able to understand a thing of what I am reading about.

So yeah, in short, it is a lot of work.


edit: see, even here the kanji does not want to display properly. It is a variant of 臼 (きゅう), that is a pictograph of two hands, read: きょく (uni code U+26951)

edit2: I have fixed the Chinese tones. Many thanks for picking this up, Glenn.
 
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My main source is the book of 白川 静 "字統", which is difficult to understand even for nativer speakers. Sometimes, in order to comprehand one sentence I need to take one hour. His book is a real mind bender. 白川 静 is considered the greatest authority on kanji etymology in Japan. I wish I could meet him, but he sadly passed away in 2006.

I had heard about 白川静 and 字統 years ago, and I actually had the opportunity to look at a copy of 字統 when I was at 同志社大学, which was pretty cool. It is a bit difficult to read, though -- you're right about that!

Then I have a fantastic doctionary 角川漢和中辞典 (1959年), 貝塚 茂樹, et al.

Looks interesting. I only have 新漢語林 in paper form and 漢字源 in electronic form. How many characters does that contain? I'm assuming it's above 20,000.

edit: see, even here the kanji does not want to display properly. It is a variant of 臼 (きゅう), that is a pictograph of two hands, read: きょく (uni code U+26951)

This form intrigues me, and I haven't been able to see it yet. I guess I'll see if I can find it on in the Unihan database.

[Edit] Found it!
u2695105250pxpng-1.jpg


Thanks, Google image search!
 
Apparently his other book, entitled 字通, is even more difficult. I am too scared to look. He published quite a few, but I am absolutely mesmerised by his work. His knowledge must have been insane.

角川漢和中辞典? I think slightly less than 10.000. The descriptions are pretty detailed, including sketches. Apparently this is THE disctionary. I picked it up for 500yen, mint condition, from a 古書店 in Shibuya, via amazon.co.jp.

What I need now is this: 康煕字典
47,000 characters for 30,000yen, that is pretty amazing, plsu 7.2k page scans of ancient manuscripts.

Yes, see, he (白川) is using characters and radicals that are sometimes not even on latest ATOK software. On September, I am meeting the 社長 of 天来書院, (書道専門出版社). She invited me for a chat. Among three billion things that I want to ask her :) is a what type of pro 漢字入力ソフト they use in their company. I am so sick of lurking in the net searching for the stuff I need to type in. I could spend this time on writing calligraphy, or some articles. My guess is, whatever it may be, it won't be cheap...


edit: Look, now you can get the 角川漢和中辞典 for 240 yen lol

51VXS22B05L._SX349_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


Amazon.co.jp: 角川漢和中辞典: 貝塚 茂樹: 本
 
Given what you've said about 字通, it certainly seems like a fitting name.

Ah yes, 康煕字典. It's translated into Japanese? That's definitely one of the big boys.

Yes, see, he (白川) is using characters and radicals that are sometimes not even on latest ATOK software. On September, I am meeting the 社長 of 天来書院, (書道専門出版社). She invited me for a chat. Among three billion things that I want to ask her :) is a what type of pro 漢字入力ソフト they use in their company. I am so sick of lurking in the net searching for the stuff I need to type in. I could spend this time on writing calligraphy, or some articles. My guess is, whatever it may be, it won't be cheap...

Yeah, I've wondered about that type of software too. Of course, if you don't have the fonts to display it, it won't do too much good, but I guess they come installed with the input software. I also doubt it'll be cheap.
 
Ah yes, 康煕字典. It's translated into Japanese? That's definitely one of the big boys.

I can't wait to get my hands and eyes on that thing. I hope it works with win7. I need to talk to the publisher before i buy it.

ATOK comes with fonts. I am not sure if you had a chance to use it, but it is quite handy. It has flaws, but then again nothing is perfect. It displays quite a number of 異体字, too. Unfortunately, ATOK is not good enough for me. I need something that can do some serious "damage".

I hope you don't mind me asking, but are you Japanese, @Glenn ?
 
I haven't had the pleasure of using ATOK. I use Google IME now, which is pretty good (and free!). @epigene tipped me off to it, and I'm glad she did.

I don't mind you asking at all. I'm flattered, but no, I'm American and have no Japanese heritage (French/German).
 
Blimey, you're my neighbour then. I was born in Poland, but I am mixed like a street dog.

I will have a look at the Google IME. Any bit helps.

Once again, thanks a lot for the spell check.
 
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