Dictionaries like jisho list the meanings for every kanji. I suppose those meanings are guessed from the compounds where those kanji appear. Like HON = book, origin etc..
Japanese people have the same thing? For example they have dictionaries that show the meaning of kanji by themselves? So they can see things like "HON in NIHON is written with that particolar kanji because its meaning is ORIGIN, so we have origin of the sun".
I hope this is clear enough to be understood xD

Kanji dictionaries do give meanings of kanji in Japanese, usually they are the Japanese words the kanji represent, or explanations based on the compounds the kanji appear in. An etymology dictionary would tell them why "nihon" is used.

For a concrete example of what Yudantaiteki is saying, check out http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/167...%E6%97%A5/ or http://kanjitisiki.com/syogako/syogaku1/65.html

Goo lists the readings and then goes on to show the various meanings it can have and compounds that convey this sense (sorry for my off-the-cuff translation):

Goo Wrote:Sound: ニチ (Go-On) ジツ (Kan-on) [Kun] ひ　か

School Kanji: 1st Year

[1]〈ニチ〉 (words where nichi is the reading)
1. The Sun [Sunlight・Solar Eclipse・Sunset・Sun]
2. Daytime [All day・Dusk・Day and Night]
3. 24-hour time period
4. Japan
5. Hyūga Province

[2]〈ジツ〉
1. The sun
2. Daytime
[...]
［Names］あき・てる・とき・はる・ひる
[Difficult readings] [a bunch of words that don't use the standard On readings]

and so on. I haven't really seen them go into etymology because that's rarely relevant.

Ah, now I understand! Btw goo rocks! I didn't knew it xD

Do you know how all this matter is managed in japanese schools? When japanese children learn new kanji, I suppose the teacher shows them some common words with that particular kanji. For example, when they learn 映, I suppose the teacher (and the school book they use) shows them compunds like 映画. Do you know if they learn also the meaning of the kanji, like:

- Look students, one of the meaning of "映" is "像をうつし出す" (taken from goo) as in "映画".

Or they just infer the meaning implicitly from the compounds without need to attribuite a meaning to the kanji by itself?

Iirc the students are given a (prototypical) meaning. The whole point of kanji is to represent ideas, not to use this characteristic (and have them infer) in teaching seems absurd, granted they are also given compounds as example to see how specification/diversification in meaning takes place.

cophnia61 Wrote:Do you know how all this matter is managed in japanese schools? When japanese children learn new kanji, I suppose the teacher shows them some common words with that particular kanji. For example, when they learn 映, I suppose the teacher (and the school book they use) shows them compunds like 映画. Do you know if they learn also the meaning of the kanji, like:

- Look students, one of the meaning of "映" is "像をうつし出す" (taken from goo) as in "映画".

Or they just infer the meaning implicitly from the compounds without need to attribuite a meaning to the kanji by itself?

Their books may give some meanings, but it's not stressed. The main way they learn kanji is just to associate them with words they already know, or learn some new words with them. Kanji represent morphemes or words in the language, not ideas, and the kids already have a pretty large vocabulary, so that's the most efficient way to do things.

I may have worded this badly. Of course I didn't mean kanji are strictly ideogrammatic, but that in addition to a sound/signifier, they visually represent the signified of a morpheme, and to not use this dimension seems contrary to their very purpose. And while each morpheme is a bijective sound/meaning association, the fact that different morphemes use the same kanji indicates that a macro-semantic category is formed (at least cognitively) around this kanji, and I think it's legitimate to refer to it as concept, or ideas.

EratiK Wrote:I may have worded this badly. Of course I didn't mean kanji are strictly ideogrammatic, but that in addition to a sound/signifier, they visually represent the signified of a morpheme, and to not use this dimension seems contrary to their very purpose. And while each morpheme is a bijective sound/meaning association, the fact that different morphemes use the same kanji indicates that a macro-semantic category is formed (at least cognitively) around this kanji, and I think it's legitimate to refer to it as concept, or ideas.

Thank for your explanation! Meanwhile I found this old thread, and I think this quote from there integrates well with what you said:

Quote:Even an illiterate person will have some concept of morphemes -- for instance, a child probably has an instinctive notion that there is some morpheme in Japanese "shoku" that is associated with food, because the child is familiar with words like "shokuji" and "shokudou". Later the child will be taught that this "shoku" is represented with the symbol 食, which is also used for the word "taberu" that they already know means "eat".

So it's obvius that kanji have some sort of meanings packed in themselves.

Now I'm going to read the rest of that thread, surely it's difficult to find clear info about those matters, it seems it is almost easier to find if there is water on pluto xD