synewave
Member
From: Susono, Japan
Registered: 2006-06-23
Posts: 864
Website
How about a thread devoted to memorable kanji compounds based on their Heisig keywords? Perhaps there are a few cases where keywords could be "better" however a lot of the time they are perfect.
I came across 外交官 （がいこうかん） yesterday and don't think I will forget it.
Admittedly I did have to look it up in my dictionary coz I couldn't work out what an 'outside' 'mingle' 'bureaucrat' was...pretty obvious though:( Doh!
ファブリス
Administrator
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-06-14
Posts: 4021
Website
No 
But I came accross the compounds for "embassy" and other related words before, where 外 often appears. So I thought of someone who mingles in outside/international affairs.
With that in mind, I saw an interesting book at the library, it is like a compound building book, which explains various kanji and what they mean as a suffix or prefix, and all the compounds you can make with them. So for example for this one, it's not so much "outside" of some place, but rather "foreign country". Once you add that meaning to the kanji, then you'll probably guess a lot of other related compounds without looking it up.
edit: here it is, Building Word Power in Japanese. (I should probably go get it now that I think of it, it's one of those books that could complement well with RTK).
pps: Interesting also, perhaps one could prioritize the onyomi readings for these prefixes and suffixes (there are 63 in that book according to one reviewer).
Wakela
Member
From: Kamakura
Registered: 2006-04-08
Posts: 69
Website
I have a telescope, so I learned some astronomy exrpressions, which are interesting and beautiful:
水星 【すいせい】 (n) Mercury (planet), (P)
金星 【きんせい】 (n) Venus (planet)
火星 【かせい】 (n) Mars (planet), (P)
木星 【もくせい】 (n) Jupiter (planet), (P)
土星 【どせい】 (n) Saturn (planet)
天王星 【てんのうせい】 (n) Uranus (planet)
海王星 【かいおうせい】 (n) Neptune (planet)
冥王星 【めいおうせい】 (n) Pluto (planet)
星雲 【せいうん】 (n) Nebula
銀河 【ぎんが】 (n) Milky Way, galaxy, (P)
It's interesting to see where the Japanese abandoned their naming system for the planets and started translating the Western system. It coincides with the planets you can see with a telescope and the ones you can't. Also, throw in the sun and the moon, and you get an interesting correlation with the days of the week. Both Japan and the West named Saturday basically the same thing...evidence of ancient astronauts?
Now that I think of it, this probably reflects Chinese astronomy, and Japan got the names from them. Does anyone know if these are the same in Chinese?
fiminor
Member
From: Sheffield, UK
Registered: 2006-02-27
Posts: 45
Wakela wrote:
Both Japan and the West named Saturday basically the same thing...evidence of ancient astronauts?
Now that I think of it, this probably reflects Chinese astronomy, and Japan got the names from them. Does anyone know if these are the same in Chinese?
I became really interested in this issue when I started teaching a Japanese family about the Romans and found that origins of the terms for days of the week, planets etc seemed to be the same. I have to admit I was slightly disappointed to discover that it had been imported into Japanese via Chinese from the West. Ancient astronauts would be far more fun! This article is interesting though...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekday
At work, so can't type kanji, but was amused yesterday to come across this compound:
lunatic dog ill きょうけんびょう - rabies
Last edited by fiminor (2007 March 21, 6:28 pm)
JimmySeal
Member
From: Kyoto
Registered: 2006-03-28
Posts: 2279
So basically, Japanese got its names for the inner 5 planets (besides Earth) from China, and both countries named the Western days of the week after the planets, sun and moon using the same pattern as Latin and the Romance languages (though the Romance words for Saturday and Sunday do not follow the Latin pattern).
Japan has come to use this system exclusively, but Chinese has not adopted it at all:
http://www.cjvlang.com/Dow/dowchin.html
Days of the week and planets in English, Japanese and Italian:
Monday/moon 月曜日/月 lunedi/luna
Tuesday/Mars 火曜日/火星 martedi/marte
Wednesday/Mercury 水曜日/水星 mercoledi/mercurio
Thursday/Jupiter 木曜日/木星 giovedi/giove
Friday/Venus 金曜日/金星 venerdi/venere
The names for Saturday and Sunday have been influenced by Christianity in French, Spanish, and Italian, but in Latin and English they are named after Saturn and the Sun
Saturday/Saturn 土曜日/土星 dies saturni/saturnus
Sunday/Sun 日曜日/日 dies solis/sol
The Latin names for the planets and days of the week, in turn, came from the Babylonians. So there you have it: Babylonians > Latin > Jesuits > Chinese > Japanese. They've come a long way.
Last edited by JimmySeal (2007 March 21, 9:48 am)
Wakela
Member
From: Kamakura
Registered: 2006-04-08
Posts: 69
Website
Very interesting...though you're right. I was hoping for something a little more exotic than "...and they got it from the Babylonians."
Speaking of stars and history, I recently read that since the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear) was thought to be a bear by the ancient Greeks and Native Americans, it is believed to date since before Asians people migrated to the New World through Alaska, making it the oldest man-made thing still in existence. Just another trippy thing to think about next time you have a clear night sky.
Oh, yeah. Japanese. OK, I looked it up, but the Japanese simply call it 七星（しちせい). Not all that interesting.
Though the Pleiades gets its own kanji, 昴 (すばる). That's where the car company got its name, hence the logo.
