So 川 and 河... not only do they share similar meaning but also the same reading of かわ... does anyone know exactly what the differences between these are. Hesig assigns 川 the meaning of "stream" and 河 the meaning of "river" but from the usage I've seen... it doesn't seem to work as neatly as that in Japanese. I've seen 川 in references to large sized rivers, not just smaller streams. So maybe it's not a size difference that determines the difference? Perhaps there's a nebulous room of overlap between the use of these Kanij?... or are there strict rules denoting the appropriate times one should use one or the other... curious...

One Chinese etymology book I'm using suggests that the second character (the [h?] - http://zhongwen.com/cgi-bin/zipux2.cgi?b5=%AAe - apologies, this forum won't let me use kanji from Safari) is used for channels and smaller rivers. Presumably, the difference is long lost on the Japanese so it's just a matter of tradition. Interestingly, http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ doesn't seem to make a difference between the two...

川 is more common for the names of rivers in Japan, 河 is more common for foreign rivers. Not an absolute rule, though, and that doesn't do much to distinguish the compound words.... particularly the curiously redundant 河川 (かせん, "rivers").

Kieron Wrote:particularly the curiously redundant 河川 (かせん, "rivers").

Such redundancy is very common and comes from Chinese as well, which would otherwise be inintelligible in its spoken form...

河川 that's an easy and fun compound to know.

I had a chat about this when I was playing the kanji name game with a Japanese teacher at my school (how do you do your name in kanji, what does it mean etc.) Her name is Kawamura but when I said - oh kawa like river. She said - yeah, but the hard kanji for river. Which was when I learned 河　for the first time. I thought it was an interesting way to think about it.

河 is Chinese river, 川 is Japanese river.

https://www.google.com/#hl=sv&sclient=ps...36&bih=794

泥の河 (Muddy River) is the title of a very good Japanese movie by 小栗康平, it was produced in 1981. What a movie!
河 is in a fifth grade kanji in 教育漢字.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:https://www.google.com/#hl=sv&sclient=ps...36&bih=794

This link just takes me to the Google homepage.

River is 川 in ordinary writing and as a suffix on river names. 河 can appear in compounds, proper names (including song names).

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TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:https://www.google.com/#hl=sv&sclient=ps...36&bih=794

don't you just hate people like this?

I'm sorry if the link is screwed up. I don't know what it is, in my browser it's shortened and leads to search results.

Here's one of them, I thought it could help.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:I'm sorry if the link is screwed up. I don't know what it is, in my browser it's shortened and leads to search results.

It seems it doesn't work for users using certain browsers, such as IE and some others. Anyway, it's just a Google search for the term 川と河の違い , if anyone's interested.

Among 100 most popular Japanese family names (Wikipedia):
5 names with 川 and only one with 河.

Aozora Bunko - writers' names:
16 with 川 and 5 with 河.

Quote:基本的にはどちらも同じなのだが、一般的な認識としては「流れが小さく川幅の狭いものを川」、「流れが大きく川幅の広いものを河」と定義する場合が多い。

From a site I found from that google search. So basically what arupan said^^;