Meanings of very rare kanji - Printable Version

Meanings of very rare kanji - Printable Version

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Meanings of very rare kanji - gfb345 - 2010-05-13

I understand that the standard ultimate source for kanji in the 15-volume 大漢和辞典, but this source is pretty much out-of-reach for me at the moment (in more ways than one).

For the meaning of extremely rare kanji, what online resource comes closest to the 大漢和辞典? (It doesn't have to be free.)

At the moment, I'm looking for the meaning of 鬳. If anyone knows of a source that gives an actual meaning for it, please let me know. (EDICT gives pronunciations for it but no meanings.)

TIA!

Meanings of very rare kanji - Jarvik7 - 2010-05-13

KANJIDIC's (EDICT doesn't have kanji definitions) definitions are pretty much worthless. I use 漢字源 for all of my lookups and it hasn't failed me yet. If you want a bilingual dictionary the best one is the big brother of the Kodansha learner's dictionary: NTC/ Kenkyusha New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (NJECD).

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-13

I don't know a suitable on-line dictionary, but as for that character 鬳, the KanjiGen (in my denshi jisho) suggests it is a "good quality three-legged food-steaming utensil".

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-13

Isn't it fair to say that if Nelson does not have it, a Japanese person does not know it? There are plenty of characters that simply are not Japanese in the sense that a Japanese person does not know or use them, maybe.

Japanese people have trouble recognizing 完璧's second character is not wall. "Because who needs to know that it is not wall? " is how several Japanese people responded, when I asked them how come they did not know.

http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/%E9%AC%B3

and

http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/39731

Just for the hell of it.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Jarvik7 - 2010-05-13

Err, that's not really a story.

I can't give any input on that specific character since it seems to not even be encoded in S-JIS, so I am unable to look it up in my EPWING dicts (nor are most other Japanese software programs able to make use of the character since Japan is slow at implementing unicode).

It seems to be a Chinese hanzi that is given some use with proper nouns in Japanese (referring to Chinese arts) though.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Evil_Dragon - 2010-05-13

I'm kind of curious as to how you encountered that character in the first place.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Jarvik7 - 2010-05-13

btw, Kanjigen can be accessed online at http://www.bitway.ne.jp/gakken/kanjigen/ for 263yen/month.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-13

鬲 by the way, is radical number 193, but it isn't treated as a unit or named in RTK. Meaning is "three-legged food-steaming utensil" (for story-building maybe call it "tripod" for short). Among the Joyo kanji it also appears in 融 and 隔.

So 鬳 = 虍 + 鬲. "Tiger" add the sense of high quality.

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-13

Jarvik7 Wrote:Err, that's not really a story.

Yeah I know...

That's what I hope to do with the wiki: Move the non-story stuff over there, along with the percolated best version of stories. I'd rather not put non-story stuff in the story space, so that people who want to just to just memorize the kanji as fast as possible can ignore the other stuff.

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-13

Katsuo Wrote:鬲 by the way, is radical number 193, but it isn't treated as a unit or named in RTK. Meaning is "three-legged food-steaming utensil" (for story-building maybe call it "tripod" for short). Among the Joyo kanji it also appears in 融 and 隔.

So 鬳 = 虍 + 鬲. "Tiger" add the sense of high quality.

Sweet info, that.

Do you recognize that from knowing the characters? I assume that character is classifed under the tiger radical, right?

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-13

kapalama Wrote:Do you recognize that from knowing the characters?

I know the radicals reasonably well. I made a table of radicals vs. primitives here.
(I don't know the character 鬳)

Quote:I assume that character is classifed under the tiger radical, right?

The KanjiGen says it's 鬲.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Tobberoth - 2010-05-13

If you're good enough at Japanese, Kanjigen is definitely what you want to use when it comes to kanji. I use it mainly for understanding the difference when a word can be written using several kanji, but kanjigen contains it all.

Meanings of very rare kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-05-13

kapalama Wrote:Isn't it fair to say that if Nelson does not have it, a Japanese person does not know it?

I would say as a general rule that's probably true but it really depends. There are some specialized kanji that most Japanese people would not know but that people working in specific disciplines on specific things might be more familiar with.

The original question is a little odd to me because absent any context, I'm not sure what the purpose of knowing an English meaning of a very rare character is.

The 漢字源 is good, although it can be a little confusing for beginners or even intermediate students because certain aspects of the dictionary are geared towards classical Chinese and kanbun rather than modern Japanese usage. Although I suppose if you're needing a meaning for a character as rare as the OP, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Tobberoth:

Quote:I use it mainly for understanding the difference when a word can be written using several kanji, but kanjigen contains it all.

Hmm, I don't find it very useful for that; to me Kanjigen's definitions (as far as comparing characters) are hard to understand and don't always seem to reflect normal usage. My usual standard is the Koujien; my personal guideline is that if Koujien doesn't disambiguate the usage, it's not something that most Japanese people would be able to do without checking some specialized reference work, and isn't all that important.

(I find the Kanjigen invaluable for looking up pinyin readings of characters and for getting some information about their usage in classical Chinese.)

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-13

yudantaiteki Wrote:
kapalama Wrote:Isn't it fair to say that if Nelson does not have it, a Japanese person does not know it?
I would say as a general rule that's probably true but it really depends. There are some specialized kanji that most Japanese people would not know but that people working in specific disciplines on specific things might be more familiar with.

If anyone knows of any of them, I would be curious. I know that Nelson's dedication of the original was to his non-Japanese son on the occasion of passing the Japanese medical exams so I would assume that all the medical terms were in there.

Meanings of very rare kanji - gfb345 - 2010-05-13

Jarvik7 Wrote:KANJIDIC's (EDICT doesn't have kanji definitions) definitions are pretty much worthless. I use 漢字源 for all of my lookups and it hasn't failed me yet. If you want a bilingual dictionary the best one is the big brother of the Kodansha learner's dictionary: NTC/ Kenkyusha New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (NJECD).

Thanks. It looks like I'm out of luck no matter how I slice it.

Meanings of very rare kanji - gfb345 - 2010-05-13

Katsuo Wrote:I don't know a suitable on-line dictionary, but as for that character 鬳, the KanjiGen (in my denshi jisho) suggests it is a "good quality three-legged food-steaming utensil".

Thanks! What kind of denshi jisho is that? Can it be used by someone who does not read Japanese?

Meanings of very rare kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-05-13

No, the Kanjigen is all Japanese. (The character doesn't seem to be in my denshi jisho...) I don't know of any resources that give meanings of very rare characters in English. I think the general assumption is that if you can't read Japanese you probably don't need to know what they mean.

Where did you encounter this character?

Meanings of very rare kanji - JimmySeal - 2010-05-14

yudantaiteki Wrote:No, the Kanjigen is all Japanese. (The character doesn't seem to be in my denshi jisho...) I don't know of any resources that give meanings of very rare characters in English. I think the general assumption is that if you can't read Japanese you probably don't need to know what they mean.

Where did you encounter this character?

My kanjigen doesn't have that character either, but it does have 獻, and explains the general meaning of the left side in the etymology for that character.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-14

gfb345 Wrote:What kind of denshi jisho is that? Can it be used by someone who does not read Japanese?

The KanjiGen (漢字源) is a kanji dictionary aimed at Japanese people. It's widely available in paper form, and has also been included in many denshi jisho starting from about ten years ago. (Though more recently Casio and Seiko have changed to the Kangorin).

The version of the KanjiGen in older or less expensive denshi jisho usually has around 6,000 characters, whereas newer ones have around 13,000. 鬳 can only be found in the latter.

As yudantaiteki says, the dictionary is all Japanese, so reading through the etymological details of a character may be difficult. However simple information such as the stroke count, radical, etc. is easy to make out.

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-14

JimmySeal Wrote:
yudantaiteki Wrote:No, the Kanjigen is all Japanese. (The character doesn't seem to be in my denshi jisho...) I don't know of any resources that give meanings of very rare characters in English. I think the general assumption is that if you can't read Japanese you probably don't need to know what they mean.

Where did you encounter this character?
My kanjigen doesn't have that character either, but it does have 獻, and explains the general meaning of the left side in the etymology for that character.

For More Fun About This Charあcter:

Haplern (NTC, not KLD) and Nelson list 獻 as a variant form of RTK # 1615 献 with a listed radical of　犬. Although 南 itself does not seem to have assumed any of the apparent meaning of 鬳 (the character in question).

I wonder if any other characters that seem to be built from 南 are actually made from 鬳. I guess one way to tell would be to look for characters with 南 that read ケン，コン rather than ナン，ナ

(In my quick check, there are only two characters built with 南．楠 which read ナン, thus it is from 南, and 献立 (こんだて) which reads ケン in other usages, which means it is from 獻 and 鬳.

Meanings of very rare kanji - kapalama - 2010-05-14

Katsuo Wrote:I don't know a suitable on-line dictionary, but as for that character 鬳, the KanjiGen (in my denshi jisho) suggests it is a "good quality three-legged food-steaming utensil".

Did you copy/paste the character from his post, or do you have handwriting recognition in your thing? Or was this just old school stroke counting?

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-14

Are you asking how I found the character in my denshi jisho? I used multi-radical look-up, i.e. typed in かなえ & とら (for 鬲 and 虍) which gives seven possibilities including 鬳.

Meanings of very rare kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-05-14

What denshi jisho do you have? Does it have characters beyond the JIS1 and 2? I tried かなえ and とら also, and the only result I get is the old form of 献. I tried stroke count and other methods to and I couldn't get it to come up.

Meanings of very rare kanji - Jarvik7 - 2010-05-14

The official iphone kanjigen app from logovista has JIS1-4 (kanjigen 4th edition)

My denshijisho is the same (Casio dataplus 3 XD-GW6800)

My EPWING is considerably older (1993) so only has JIS1-2

Meanings of very rare kanji - Katsuo - 2010-05-14

I used a Canon wordtank M300 to find that kanji. It includes JIS 1-4 for a total of 13,112 characters.

My other, older, denshi jisho all have JIS 1&2 only i.e. 6,355 characters, and they only find the one result for かなえ & とら. In fact for general use the extra results from the extended set just get in the way, so I only use the Canon when searching for very rare characters.