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Reply #1 - 2010 January 23, 7:03 pm
gibosi Member
Registered: 2006-09-01 Posts: 116

As I continue to work my way through RTK2, I wanted to find another word using 喪.  (Heisig gives 喪失。)  喪心 does not appear to be a common word, and in fact, I checked with two of my Japanese friends, and they do not know this word.  However, when I searched Japanese pages in Google, it appears on about 70,000,000 pages!  This is comparable to 結婚！ 

I can't believe this word is legitimately this common so I checked a number of pages looking for some sort of explanation, but I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.  However, my reading skill is quite low, so I am hoping someone else might take a look for me.

Here is my search result URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … =&aqi=

Thanks much

Reply #2 - 2010 January 23, 7:28 pm
mirina Member
From: USA Registered: 2009-09-15 Posts: 102

Put the word in quotes. The results will change dramatically.

A number of the results seem to be from dictionaries as well.

Reply #3 - 2010 January 23, 7:29 pm
Ben Bullock Member
Registered: 2010-01-19 Posts: 61

gibosi wrote:

喪心 does not appear to be a common word ...  However, when I searched Japanese pages in Google, it appears on about 70,000,000 pages!
...
Here is my search result URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … =&aqi=

You'll get better results if you put quotes around the word:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … i=&oq=

Otherwise, Google breaks it into two kanjis and gives you all the results with either one of the kanjis on the page, regardless of whether they form one word.

Japanese language search is quite a difficult job! I wrote a search engine for my department's records, and this kind of thing (not having spaces in the words) causes so many problems.

See also http://ginstrom.com/scribbles/2008/04/2 … hive-site/

Last edited by Ben Bullock (2010 January 23, 10:27 pm)

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Reply #4 - 2010 January 23, 8:11 pm
yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

喪 is a rare enough character that many people probably only know 喪失, which is definitely the most common word using that (and 記憶喪失).  I am familiar with 喪服 because it appears frequently in annotations to Genji, but I'm not sure that word is used much nowadays.

The rarer a character is, the more likely it is that there is only 1 common word using the kanji.

Reply #5 - 2010 January 23, 9:31 pm
JimmySeal Member
From: Kyoto Registered: 2006-03-28 Posts: 2279

喪 by itself is a word that anyone would know.

Reply #6 - 2010 January 23, 10:21 pm
Ben Bullock Member
Registered: 2010-01-19 Posts: 61

yudantaiteki wrote:

喪 is a rare enough character that many people probably only know 喪失, which is definitely the most common word using that (and 記憶喪失).

I think some people would know other words like 喪中欠礼

Reply #7 - 2010 January 23, 10:42 pm
JimmySeal Member
From: Kyoto Registered: 2006-03-28 Posts: 2279

Or at least 喪中.  That's another common one.

Reply #8 - 2010 January 23, 10:48 pm
Aijin Member
From: California Registered: 2009-05-29 Posts: 648

喪服、喪章, and 喪神 aren't too rare.

Reply #9 - 2010 January 24, 10:27 am
gibosi Member
Registered: 2006-09-01 Posts: 116

Using quotes?  What a great tip!  This does make a huge difference. 

Thanks for your help guys and gals smile

Reply #10 - 2010 January 24, 1:10 pm
Javizy Member
From: England Registered: 2007-02-16 Posts: 770

I've seen the phrase 喪に服する. It gets over 800,000 results, but that's about all I can tell you about it.

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