This is kind of funny... According to rikaichan (whatever dictionary it uses) 呂 is ロ and リョ in its On reading （音読み） and it is せぼね in its Kun reading （訓読み）. せぼね is "spine; backbone" but if you type that in, both rikaichan and the IME say the kanji for sebone is 背骨 which is se + bo ne which is literally back + bone. Hey, that's pretty funny... bo ne means bone. Oddly the second character's only listed reading is actually ほね not ぼね. Weird that each time you change directions from kanji to reading and reading to kanji, you get further away from where you started!

edit: I think the lesson is that you need to just learn actual vocabulary

Allow me to comment on the kanji 呂 and its meaning.

Technically its basic meanings are spine, rokuryo (written 六呂, one of the ancient Chinese chromatic scales), long, and 呂 (name of a country in the 周 era). But they're all archaic and too etymological. I don't think they'd help learners learn related kanji at all.

As far as RtK goes, I recommend you associate it with "joined together (in a row)," "to be in a line" or something along those lines. Educated native speakers who have a better command of Japanese than most people would think of this kind of image when reading the kanji. Actually, kanji that contain 呂 often have this lie-in-a-row kind of sense. For example, 侶 is 人+呂 and means close friends/relatives/comrades. One of the most frequent compounds using the kanji is 伴侶, which means "companion" and "spouse."

You can also understand why it etymologically means "spine," "musical scale," "long" if you know the basic image native speakers have. I'm guessing you can create more easy-to-remember stories for related kanji and compounds.

By the way, sometimes Heisig's English keywords for kanji are very different from images native speakers have. I think this is partially because the accurate images are not always helpful to learners when it comes to memorizing compounds and/or nested kanji. But if you have trouble understanding English translations for some specific kanji in his book, you might want to ask native speakers who know his method what would be better keywords. What he thought would be the best may not work for you.

I just checked a Mandarin dictionary to see if it held the same meaning of 'spine' in old Chinese as well and found:

Quote:脊椎骨。同「膂」。說文解字：「呂，脊骨也。

It seems the character's meaning of 'spine' and the fact that it's a pictograph of a spine predates its use as a musical term/surname. I was even able to track down some ye olden time Chinese poetry in which it's used to mean 'spine'.

I am enjoying this thread a lot--thanks everybody for your interesting responses. After reading Magamo's post about the different meanings of 呂 and associating it with the idea of "joined in a row," I am curious about 風呂 (ふろ) -- does anyone have any thoughts why "bath" is made from joining the characters for wind and spine/joined in a row? Something to do with windy outdoor baths?

kioku3 Wrote:Something to do with windy outdoor baths?

露天風呂!

QuackingShoe Wrote:

kioku3 Wrote:Something to do with windy outdoor baths?

露天風呂!

Yes, perhaps it does come from　ろてんぶろ! I can see the connection to the outdoors in the first three kanji but I guess I was curious why 呂 is part of the word "bath". Anyway, I will remember that word now, thanks!

漢字源 Wrote:象形。一連に連なった背骨を描いたもので、似たものが一線上に並ぶ意を含む。また、転じて、並んだ音階をも呂という。

The current meaning is derived from the etymological meaning. It was originally just a drawing of a spine and meant spine, but it took on the meaning of things being joined together in a line/sequence (family lineage, musical score, etc) much like the vertebrae of the spine.

Most usages of the kanji are just ateji or names though (infact it's a 人名用, not 常用漢字).

At what point do obsolete readings get dropped? In this case, why do they continue to list せぼね as a reading for 呂? Was 呂 at one point actually used instead of 膂 or 背骨?
Does it appear with the meaning 'spine' in old literature or something? It'd be great if such obsolete readings were either marked or omitted. They only confuse me. And there's lots of them.

Thora Wrote:It'd be great if such obsolete readings were either marked or omitted. They only confuse me. And there's lots of them.

For most characters my kanji dictionaries (漢字源 and 学研漢和大辞典) list readings for ON, KUN, NAME, and which ones are normally used.

In this case, it just lists the readings for ON and NAME, probably because it's a 人名用 character (it doesn't show せぼね).

《音読み》 リョ/ロ
《名付け》 おと·とも·なが·ふえ

I wouldn't trust KANJIDIC very much for anything btw. That せぼね entry is probably just from someone's unique kanji usage of 呂 with different furigana, and isn't an accepted reading. That's the problem of using a dictionary made by people who don't know much about dictionaries and aren't experts at the language (Breen was a computer science prof and many entries are user submitted).

I see. I use online 国語　or Kenkyusha JE dictionaries for words, but I've been using Kanjidic if I need to check a character. (Nelson is too heavy and my Wordtank was the prototype. =] ) Is there a non-Kanjidic online character dictionary? Or digital versions of the ones you use or recommend?

I use EPWING versions of the dictionaries, but there must be an online version of 漢字源 somewhere. 学研漢和大辞典 is better in my opinion but it's not as widely used.

Example of how it displays readings (御):
1《常用音訓》 ギョ/ゴ/おん
2《音読み》 ギョ/ゴ
3《訓読み》 おさめる(をさむ)/はべる/ふせぐ/お/おん/おおん(おほん)/み
4《名付け》 お·おき·おや·のり·み·みつ

1: The normally-used on and kun readings (on in katakana, kun in hiragana)
2: All accepted ON readings (separated by the type of ON reading)
3: All accepted kun readings (with historical kana usage in brackets)
4: Name-use readings

One pro for KANJIDIC is that it also displays the Chinese and Korean readings.

Thanks, I'll look into both EPWING and online.

kioku3 Wrote:I am enjoying this thread a lot--thanks everybody for your interesting responses. After reading Magamo's post about the different meanings of 呂 and associating it with the idea of "joined in a row," I am curious about 風呂 (ふろ) -- does anyone have any thoughts why "bath" is made from joining the characters for wind and spine/joined in a row? Something to do with windy outdoor baths?

i think it was the on-reading used here... right?.. and with the on-reading it formed the said japanese word...

oh my god O_O i'm lost in my own topic... hahaha i can't understand some of the posts... just shows how noobish i am...