tsukikage: (PGSM - Let It Burn)
[personal profile] tsukikage
Oh man, sometimes I just have to say:
Fuck you Japanese...
If anyone wants an idea of what I'm talking about who doesn't already, here's a Wikipedia article on kanji for you. Or if you just want a taste:
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written 治す, means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix or correct something" (e.g. a bicycle or a poorly written Wikipedia article). Sometimes the differences are very clear; other times they are quite subtle. Sometimes there are differences of opinion among reference works -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. Because of this confusion, Japanese people may have trouble knowing which kanji to use. One workaround is simply to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと moto, which has at least five different kanji, 元, 基, 本, 下, 素, three of which have only very subtle differences.

Why did my language passion have to be this language?

Date: 2006-06-13 06:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophysduckling.livejournal.com
In Chinese, I can recognize certain radicals and associate them with a few words they appear in, but I can't actually write the character and am uncertain when reading. I recognize 元, which is a radical in the Chinese word for garden and the Chinese currency. 本 is a radical that appears in many things, including Japan and the word for stupid (heh), but I couldn't actually point out "stupid" and I can find "Japan" only if there's a moon in front of the 本-related part. (I can recognize 下, which means down or next, although I took it for the word that means no or not at first. >.<)

Date: 2006-06-13 06:25 am (UTC)
ext_12881: DO NOT TAKE (Default)
From: [identity profile] tsukikage85.livejournal.com
Actually, there's a sun in front of 本: it basically means the source of the sun. You know, land of the rising sun and all that. ^_^ I'm most familiar with 本 as meaning book, though.
Do you mean you took 下 for 不? (I could definitely imagine myself doing that.)

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