Does anybody know of any Japanese dictionary that explains how certain Kanji combinations add up to represent a particular meaning? I don't mean a Kanji dictionary, but rather something that takes compounds words such as 電話 or 手紙 (which are obvious ones) and explains the thinking or "logic" behind the meaning. I think it'd help immensely with memorising new vocab whose meaning is kind of "obscure" or historical.

For further clarification, what I'm looking for is something like this: Let's say I lookup the word 中国, and get the following entry:

中国
Central (中) country (国). In ancient Asia, China was regarded as the centre of cultural development and trade, thus leading to it being considered the "central nation" of the ancient world.

Is there anything like this?

http://gogen-allguide.com
Maybe the site above? It's not exactly what you want, but it explains word origins.

EDIT: I checked, and both 大辞泉(Daijisen) and 大辞林(Daijirin) include a note about how the first kanji in 中国 is because of sinocentrism, so maybe a general dictionary is all you need.

I recall reading that attempts to elucidate the etymology of a single Chinese character are often controversial because of poor attestation, diverging traditions, and other archaeological--linguistic problems. Can I take the original post to mean that combination of kanji into compounds is more organized and less happen-stance than the combination of primitives into kanji? If so, cool!!!

aldebrn Wrote:I recall reading that attempts to elucidate the etymology of a single Chinese character are often controversial because of poor attestation, diverging traditions, and other archaeological--linguistic problems. Can I take the original post to mean that combination of kanji into compounds is more organized and less happen-stance than the combination of primitives into kanji? If so, cool!!!

For some of the compounds you can easily see the logic. E.g. "regulation" is made up of the kanji for "standard" & "system" (using Heisig keywords). That makes sense.

規制 = kisei = regulation.

Compounds are almost entirely logical. Some expressions are a little strange though. For example 水泡に帰す.