Archaic Kanji

[fahymdula]

Do any of you have much information on ancient and obscure kanji that are no longer used today? I find it very interesting. Let's share our information about it here.

[羽之助]

Well, as far as 'ancient' goes, I'm interested in prewar, traditional (as in still used in HK and Taiwan) kanji. Is there anything in particular that you want to know? There's lots of information regarding simplification and such on wikipedia.

Actually, I heard from a junior high school student that one of the questions on her high school entrance exam was to write さいとう using full traditional characters. If they are in the Jinmei Kanji list, traditional character forms are still acceptable, so even though most people write it as 斉藤, the exam question was to write it as 齋藤. Wow, that's kind of hard to see, eh? Fortunately her family never simplified the name so she wrote it without no problem.

[fahymdula]

Well, as far as 'ancient' goes, I'm interested in prewar, traditional (as in still used in HK and Taiwan) kanji. Is there anything in particular that you want to know? There's lots of information regarding simplification and such on wikipedia.

Actually, I heard from a junior high school student that one of the questions on her high school entrance exam was to write さいとう using full traditional characters. If they are in the Jinmei Kanji list, traditional character forms are still acceptable, so even though most people write it as 斉藤, the exam question was to write it as 齋藤. Wow, that's kind of hard to see, eh? Fortunately her family never simplified the name so she wrote it without no problem.

Thank you for the reply. I am actually quite familiar with the kyuujitai - shinjitai change after the war. My grandmother had taught me about it, as she had learned the kyuujitai growing up in the '30s.

That is very interesting. She's quite a lucky one. I personally like the kyuujitai more than the shinjitai. I think the traditional characters are more beautiful for some reason.

I was referring to the origins from simple pictographs to complex characters. What I find very interesting is the non-Chinese kanji. Did the Koreans also create their own hanja?

[羽之助]

Mmm, I don't know. That would be very interesting if there are Korea-specific characters. It's certainly possible; I know that Vietnam had country-specific characters before they went to all-romanization.

As for the kyuu-shin difference, as a rule I like traditional a lot better, but functionality versus aesthetics is a fine line - I have no problem writing 國 or 關, but I absolutely, absolutely hate writing 體 instead of 体. Fortunately, I find Japanese simplifications to be on the conservative side, retaining their aesthetic qualities.

As from pictographs to characters, I don't know very much as it never really did fall into my field of interest. Flipping through a big dictionary such as a 漢字源 is always fun though, because they often list the original pictograph next to the character and its variation. This may be a simple one that you already know, but the origin for 高 was (if I remember correctly), a Chinese pavilion on a hill. Don't know where to find a graphic description of the transition on the web, though.

By the way, your grandma is cool.

[fahymdula]

http://homepage2.nifty.com/TAB01645/ohara/index.htm
Check that link out, it's awesome. It has all these kanji that were only made in Japan. I think it would have been cooler if Vietnam kept the Chinese characters at least somewhat instead of totally eradicating them. I'd really like to see some of the kanji they invented. Korea still has hanja though it's not a big part of their writing system. However, they still have kept it and didn't get rid of it totally. Students still learn 2000 hanja in school or more. During freshman year, I saw one of my Korean friends reading a book written in nothing but kanji. I was like, "I thought you were Korean not Chinese." He's like no, we learn this in Korea.

[羽之助]

I had a friend from Korea and she told me that they only learn a few in high school - perhaps 2000 characters is her definition of 'a few', hah.

That link is cool - thanks! One of the things I noticed first off is that it contains the most USEFUL KANJI EVER - 々! Why, oh why has China not adopted this wondrous 字?

Edit: 丼 is Japan's most delicious character.

There should be information about Vietnamese characters, but damned if I know where to find it. Are you a student still? If you have access to a nice library (especially if you are on the west coast, I hear), you should be able to find something.

Hmm, I wonder if Korean could be written like Japanese, with hanja cores and hangul endings? or perhaps it is done like that and we don't hear about it?

Attention Korean members of OP9! Question here please!

[NERD]

Korean writes hangul without putting Chinese characters in, unlike the Japanese. In fact, Chinese characters rarely pop out in a document unless the writer chose to use some Chinese words, though words that originate from China is spoken/written frequently in hangul.

That answers your question?

[fahymdula]

That would be quite interesting. As far as I know, hanja functions as furikanji in hangul written texts. Korean family names are also written in hanja. I know one hanja. The family name 김 is written as 金. Pretty cool, huh? I wonder how you write 김치 in hanja.　Ooh yes, there is something also that is interesting to me. There is this one actress named 韓英恵　（かんはなえ）.　I have never heard of the　family name　韓 before. It means Korea. Perhaps she is a　在日韓国人? These kind of diasporas interest me.

[羽之助]

It's possible. A lot of Koreans don't like having to change their names (although Rika says that although you are incredibly pressured to change your name to something acceptably Japanese, it is not in fact a requirement) to obtain full Japanese citizenship, so maybe she took the name 韓 to remind her of her heritage. Or it could be just a stage name. Who knows.

And my question was whether, since I heard that Korean verbs and such conjugate like Japanese ones, whether the root would be hanja and the remainder hangul. But NERD, you are saying that it's written entirely in hangul or entirely in hanja, and nothing else? Or a few hanja words thrown in for effect, but never mixed? Argh so hard to explain.

[NERD]

Kimchi is not a Chinese word, therefore, its equivalent does not exist in Chinese, unless they created a word that sounds like kimchi in Chinese.

I believe the character 韓 came from China, but became the character associated with Korea in geneal. The surname 韓 exists in Korea- in fact, 한 is not a rare Korean last name, but there's more than one origin of it, all of them possibly using a different Chinese character.

Also, I know for a fact that a lot of Zainichi Koreans forego their Korean names and opt for a Japanese surname to avoid discrimination. So you can't assume the nationality of the actress solely based on her surnamee.

[羽之助]

I thought they hid it, like taking names like 金野 or 金田 if their surname was Kim. But then everyone with 金 in their family name would be suspect, wouldn't they.
You know, in my area we have a LOT of Koreans and Chinese, and Filipinos and Brazilians ... I wonder if this place could eventually form a propagating 'foreign' community that has Japanese speaking children growing up and entering the bureaucracy ... that would be cool.

[NERD]

I do not know the details about Zainichi Koreans and their last names. A good number of them do choose to remain anonymous from their heritage though- there's quite a number of Japanese celebrities who are suspected to be Zainichi Koreans, at least in Korea.

Anyway, to clarify your question, they usually write only with hangul unless they felt the need to include the Chinese characters, which are usually done in parenthesis- here's a sample sentence.

장자 ◈

중국 고대의 사상가, 제자백가(諸子百家) 중 도가(道家)의 대표자.

성은 장(莊). 이름은 주(周). 송(宋)의 몽읍(蒙邑:河南省商邱縣 근처) 출생. 정확한 생몰연대는 미상이나 맹자(孟子)와 거의 비슷한 시대에 활약한 것으로 전한다. 관영(官營)인 칠원(漆園)에서 일한 적도 있었으나, 그 이후는 평생 벼슬길에 들지 않았으며 10여 만 자에 이르는 저술을 완성하였다. 초(楚)나라의 위왕(威王)이 그를 재상으로 맞아들이려 하였으나 사양하였다. 저서인 《장자》는 원래 52편(篇)이었다고 하는데, 현존하는 것은 진대(晉代)의 곽상(郭象)이 산수(刪修)한 33편(內篇 7, 外篇 15, 雜篇 11)으로, 그 중에서 내편이 원형에 가장 가깝다고 한다.

Mind you, half of the words in there can be written in Chinese as well, but as people usually use the equivalent Korean word very often, they don't feel the need to put them in parenthesis. The words in parenthesis would be the more obscure Chinese words rarely spoken in regular conversation.

EDIT: Ugh, and my brain fries up whenever I try to switch between Korean and English.

[羽之助]

So a set of () is used ... how interesting. Sigh. Yet another language for me to learn, I guess.

[Crowley]

Masochist



10char

[I Monkey]

"Vietnamese kanji" is called "Chữ-nôm". Goddamnit!! It's such a pity Vietnamese don't write in Chữ-nôm anymore!! If we still were, then learning kanji would've been alot easier TT_TT. Those damned French people!!:p

[羽之助]

Oh sure, blame your colonial overlords for your problems! :P

[NERD]

Hanenosuke, how fluent are you in Chinese? Can you do me a favor?

[羽之助]

Mmm ... not fluent. Can barely have a simple conversation. But that is what dictionaries are for, right? What do you need?

BTW Rika would probably be a better person to ask. Or yao-yao.

[NERD]

Eh, it's okay. Was looking for a poem in Chinese, then hit a brick wall.

[羽之助]

Anything classical is beyond my meagre limits. You'd probably have just as much luck in using Rikai :)

[Crowley]

I can ask my chinese friend if you need translation help

[atomiton]

Always thought it was about 1000 characters Koreans used. Of course, there are more than double the phoneomes Japanese has, so homonyms are less of a problem.

sidenote: According to a composer friend of mine, Japanese, like Italian is one of the easiest languages to sing. Vowels are bright, pure, and have few dipthongs... he said it would be a good opera language.

[rainman]

That link is cool - thanks! One of the things I noticed first off is that it contains the most USEFUL KANJI EVER - 々! Why, oh why has China not adopted this wondrous 字?
They have. It's common usage on the mainland. And is it really kanji? ... I always thought of it as some other Japanese symbol. It's not really that useful. Repeated words are sort of common, but its not really a pain to write it twice. I mean, it's just one more character.

I love reading Korean. It's so easy, compared to reading Chinese or Japanese. I just have no idea what I'm saying. My Korean friends learned some Chinese words, but they only use the easy ones as shorthand in notes and stuff.

I have problems writing kanji, because the strokes are wrong half the time. Arrgh, why can't they keep the Chinese way of writing it? And I don't like writing simplified characters. I have problems with the proportions for the characters that are simplified funny.

[NERD]

Koreans don't use that many Chinese characters. I mean, they learn to read and write few hundred characters, give or take, but nowhere near a thousand. And since they don't really write Chinese characters in a sentence frequently like Japanese do, it's bit different.


The Korean alphabets, or hangul, is easier to learn than Chinese characters or hiragana/katakana in my opinion. It's just that Korean is not an easy language to start off with- I've heard some people complain that Korean was the hardest amongst Chinese/Korean/Japanese.

[4letterwords]

Pronunciation wise, I heard Japanese was easiest.

But all around I've heard that Korean is much easier to learn, IF you learn it first. If you learn another Asian language first, I heard it was soooo hard.

[Frankey-eh]

But all around I've heard that Korean is much easier to learn, IF you learn it first. If you learn another Asian language first, I heard it was soooo hard.

o.o do you know why that would be?
since I already know Chinese and Japanese, I figured I should learn Korean some day...

by the way, NERD, what poem were you looking for?

[4letterwords]

I don't know why actually... my linguistics teacher was explaining about asian languages and how the brain works and that came up... then I think i fell asleep... anyway, can someone look into this for me?

[NERD]

Pronunciation wise, I heard Japanese was easiest.


Only because they have horrible sets of alphabets that does not allow them to pronounce simple words like coffee/building/McDonald's properly.

But all around I've heard that Korean is much easier to learn, IF you learn it first. If you learn another Asian language first, I heard it was soooo hard.

I don't know about Chinese, but I still think that Korean is one of the most difficult languages to speak properly. A lot of people who had experience in Asia seem to agree with that notion, so... Anyway, I gotta say, learning Japanese has been much easier for me than learning English.

rika, Zhuāngzǐ (pinyin), Chuang Tzu (Wade-Giles), Chuang Tsu, or Chuang Tse (Traditional Chinese characters: 莊子; Simplified Chinese characters: 庄子. And it's not really a poem, but a section from a book called 莊周夢蝶 . Ring any bells?

[Frankey-eh]

rika, the poem was by Zhu?ngz? (pinyin), Chuang Tzu (Wade-Giles), Chuang Tsu, or Chuang Tse (Traditional Chinese characters: ??; Simplified Chinese characters: ??. And it's not really a poem, but a section from a book called ???? . Ring any bells?

I see lots of ??'s.... are you typing in Chinese? or Korean? My computer doesn't have korean installed.

[NERD]

Check again... I'm using Safari on auto, which may be the problem.

[Frankey-eh]

maybe this is what you were looking for...?

“昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻适志与！不知周也。俄然觉，则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与？胡 蝶之梦为周与？周与胡蝶，则必有分矣。此之谓物化。”（《庄子?齐物论》）

[NERD]

maybe this is what you were looking for...?

Yes!

Now if I could only understand what it meant.... T.T

[Frankey-eh]

Yes!

Now if I could only understand what it meant.... T.T

heh, I don't either.

*calls out* yao yao.....

[NERD]

I only know that section of the book is about how Chuang Tse had a dream, and wondered whether he was being a butterfly or the butterfly was being Chuang Tse... one of those Chinese philosophical mumbo-jumbo.

[gyoza]

On Asian languages, I always thought Korean would be most manageable for me, but it's very subjective, depending on how you learn.

I have no problem with pronunciation and have been able to mimic friends from other countries speaking their language on first try with little problem (my musican background? hmm...) but have plenty of problems with remembering characters since I was raised on the alphabet system. So since Korean is mostly phonetic I think and has the least characters as far as I know of the 3 main languages, then...

[NERD]

Eh. I think it's best to learn the language that you can find the most applications for, or the language you want to learn the most. Fair and simple.

Once I can read/write/speak Japanese to a conversational/advanced level, I want to pick up an European language, like German/French/Spanish.

[Frankey-eh]

Once I can read/write/speak Japanese to a conversational/advanced level, I want to pick up an European language, like German/French/Spanish.

you should learn French

:D

[NERD]

you should learn French

:D

Any particular reason why?

[Frankey-eh]

Any particular reason why?
because I'm learning it, and it's a lot of fun!

I dunno... I have this weird thing against Spanish. Probably because of that one time I went down to San Diego...

and German....meh. German doesn't sound pretty ;) (of course, I realize that Japanese doesn't either, under the same logic)

[NERD]

Ha, my French penpal actually advised against learning French, that even a native speaker stumbles with the language every now and then. Sounds pretty complicated...

I took Spanish in high school, so I figure I might give it another go. Besides, it's becoming crucial to know some Spanish, especially in some areas in US. Hell, I think Chinese/Japanese/Korean all sound horrible. :p

[Frankey-eh]

Ha, my French penpal actually advised against learning French, that even a native speaker stumbles with the language every now and then. Sounds pretty complicated...

I took Spanish in high school, so I figure I might give it another go. Besides, it's becoming crucial to know some Spanish, especially in some areas in US. Hell, I think Chinese/Japanese/Korean all sound horrible. :p

French IS complicated. That's 99% of the fun. ^_^

I meant Spanish, Japanese, and German sounds ugly because every sound is like a block--they don't flow together. Unlike French (although I'm horrible at pronouncing it), where every sound flows together like water. that's what makes it pretty.

[Faumdano]

because I'm learning it, and it's a lot of fun!

I dunno... I have this weird thing against Spanish. Probably because of that one time I went down to San Diego...

and German....meh. German doesn't sound pretty (of course, I realize that Japanese doesn't either, under the same logic)

Ha, my French penpal actually advised against learning French, that even a native speaker stumbles with the language every now and then. Sounds pretty complicated...

I took Spanish in high school, so I figure I might give it another go. Besides, it's becoming crucial to know some Spanish, especially in some areas in US. Hell, I think Chinese/Japanese/Korean all sound horrible. :p

Really? I always thought Japanese sounded quite pleasing for same reason Latin does - the pure vowels. *shrug*

[gyoza]

sidenote: According to a composer friend of mine, Japanese, like Italian is one of the easiest languages to sing. Vowels are bright, pure, and have few dipthongs... he said it would be a good opera language.

That's very interesting and true now that I think about it? And I've been wanting to write an opera for awhile. Hmm.... :watson:

And I agree with NERD on learning a language either because you'll use it, or you're really interested in it. I like Japanese and Korean, and German of the European languages (Brahms was German and that is reason enough). I never really liked French because it sounds a little 'snobbish' and not my type of language, and I always thought wiping your ass with silk would be pretty uncomfortable. XD I have to admit it sounds elegant though.

[NERD]

I'm Asian. I'm biased. End of story. :D

Well, if you are talking about the aesthetic qualities of a language, what about the Khoisan, where they use click consonants? Hell, there are whistle languages...

But rika, if you like French for the reasons you stated, see this man?
http://kurafire.net/_i/posts/generic/merovingian.jpg

Worship him.

[gyoza]

I abhor that dude. :D

Wait, did you post that before or after you read my Matrix reference?

[NERD]

Before. I was looking for that photo.

[Frankey-eh]

But rika, if you like French for the reasons you stated, see this man?
http://kurafire.net/_i/posts/generic/merovingian.jpg

Worship him.

...why? :confused:

[NERD]

Ummmm, he's one of the characters from Matrix Reloaded- hence, if you never saw the movie, you won't get it. Awkward...... :(

[Frankey-eh]

Ummmm, he's one of the characters from Matrix Reloaded- hence, if you never saw the movie, you won't get it. Awkward...... :(

^^; yeah, that would make sense...

I think I saw a couple minutes of Matrix something.... last summer.

...My relatives in China has more western movies than I do!

[NERD]

With bootleg DVDs selling at dollar a dozen, can't say I'm surprised.

[shadow]

I meant Spanish, Japanese, and German sounds ugly because every sound is like a block--they don't flow together.

That's not really true about Spanish. I wish the sounds didn't flow together so much, because then I would have an easier time understanding it... For example, "va a hacer" and "va a ser" both sound like "vaser" to me. I'm not sure if that's true and there's really no way to distinguish them without context, or there's some subtle difference.

[I Monkey]

Did anyone ever attempt to learn Vietnamese?? I'm lucky I grew up with the language and I think it's pretty f*cked up to learn.:frypan: I had French and German classes at my school and I was pretty fluent with German(although I hate the language). I had French at school for 4 years but I can't speak it anymore. I don't recommend learning them though.. especially German.
And NEVER try to learn Dutch :p.

[mikem]

I tried learning thai once. All those extra vowels and the five pitches kept screwing me up. The grammer was nice and simple at least. Easier than Japanese even.

[Kuri]

I heard german grammar was a pain in the ass, but at least the words are easy enough to pronounce. And they've got this going for them
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3FG4EOgyU&search=schnappi

French sucks, why you ask? I've noticed when trying to pronounce the sounds your tongue acts like it's trying to run away from your mouth.. Maybe it's just me

[rainman]

Korean's hard to write. There are many ways to write the same pronunciation of a word, and when spoken, it isn't so strongly pronounced, so it's easy to get confused if you're just writing by ear without knowing the words. It's similiar to Chinese that you have to memorize the words and their meanings, but at least you can read the correct pronunciation straight from the page. I only know a few simple words, but I can pick them up in a conversation usually. I have some trouble differentiating ㅡ from ㅜ sometimes, too. The grammar is very similiar to Japanese, or as much as I managed to learn anyway.

I hate what the Japanese did to their kanji. The multiple pronunciations are terrible, and they don't follow any rules for their pronunciation, so it ALL has to be memorized. At least in Chinese, you you can guess a pronunciation pretty well by looking at the character, even though the meaning tends to require memorization. Nice thing about Japanese, though, is that the pronunciation is as it's heard. Nothing to get confused about, haha. Chinese is like that, too, though I've heard some people complain about the accents. Compared to Cantonese and Hokkien, though, I don't see what they're complaining about. It's not like you need to write them out, either.

I learned Spanish in high school for four years, but I hated it. I dunno, maybe I'm biased to asian languages ;p.

[Frankey-eh]

I hate what the Japanese did to their kanji. The multiple pronunciations are terrible, and they don't follow any rules for their pronunciation, so it ALL has to be memorized. At least in Chinese, you you can guess a pronunciation pretty well by looking at the character, even though the meaning tends to require memorization. Nice thing about Japanese, though, is that the pronunciation is as it's heard. Nothing to get confused about, haha. Chinese is like that, too, though I've heard some people complain about the accents. Compared to Cantonese and Hokkien, though, I don't see what they're complaining about. It's not like you need to write them out, either.

maybe I'm just lucky, but I can usually guess kanji readings, just as I can guess Chinese readings.

because a lot of words, I've heard it used in a conversation before I've seen it in a written context. So you match the last one or two letters and the context, and you can usually come up with the sound.

but for some reason, I can NEVER guess french readings.

[Kuri]

Guess French readings.. I don't understand that

[NERD]

Korean's hard to write. There are many ways to write the same pronunciation of a word, and when spoken, it isn't so strongly pronounced, so it's easy to get confused if you're just writing by ear without knowing the words. It's similiar to Chinese that you have to memorize the words and their meanings, but at least you can read the correct pronunciation straight from the page. I only know a few simple words, but I can pick them up in a conversation usually. I have some trouble differentiating ? from ? sometimes, too. The grammar is very similiar to Japanese, or as much as I managed to learn anyway.


Um, any words you can provide as examples in particular? Because, I have to admit, I am fluent in Korean, thus coming from a different perspective from you, but I don't agree with you that there are different ways to write the same pronunciation of a word. Rather, there are words that sound alike from one another that it is hard to tell which is which, unless you know the words being used in the context.

The Korean grammar is very similar to Japanese, that I agree. In fact, picking up Japanese has been much easier for me than when I was learning English.

Oh, and how about ㅔ and ㅐ, which basically sounds the same? I swear, even Koreans have a difficulty spotting the difference between the two, which is nigh impossible to distinguish.

[Frankey-eh]

Guess French readings.. I don't understand that

like you look at "guess" and you can just pronounce it without actually being told to? I need a human recorder for French.

[rainman]

Um, any words you can provide as examples in particular? Because, I have to admit, I am fluent in Korean, thus coming from a different perspective from you, but I don't agree with you that there are different ways to write the same pronunciation of a word. Rather, there are words that sound alike from one another that it is hard to tell which is which, unless you know the words being used in the context.
aiya, I didn't remember how to write any of the words, I just write them as I hear them, or memorize how they sound. If I ever take a Korean class, I will start to learn it properly.. But anyway, what I meant was how there are silent extra consonants at the end of some characters, like 읾 is pronounced the same as 일, and how the consonant can carry over, like 익이 is pronounced like 이기 (sorry, just chaining random characters together, but you get the point right?). I guess the way you explained it is more correct, but to me it sounds like they are the same pronunciation. I guess they are memorized with the intention to pronounce them differently, but they end up being pronounced the same.
Oh, and how about ㅔ and ㅐ, which basically sounds the same? I swear, even Koreans have a difficulty spotting the difference between the two, which is nigh impossible to distinguish.
Yeah, that too. I just memorized them as the same sound, and hope that when I get to memorizing the actual words, I can memorize which is which, too.
maybe I'm just lucky, but I can usually guess kanji readings, just as I can guess Chinese readings.

because a lot of words, I've heard it used in a conversation before I've seen it in a written context. So you match the last one or two letters and the context, and you can usually come up with the sound.

but for some reason, I can NEVER guess french readings.
haha, I see. Maybe I just need to learn more. To me, it seems like having 4 pronunciations for the same word is hard for the brain. Sure, they are usually associated with the meaning, but having multiple pronunciations for the same meaning is tough ;;.

[NERD]

Check again.... I typed them in Korean, but the language option on Mac is a bit iffy.

Also, to my knowledge, there is no Korean word that uses 읾. I'll give you some examples... 닭, which means chicken. Everyone pronounces it as 닥, thus not pronouncing the ㄹ. Or there's 빚, which means dept, and 빛, which means light, but sounds about the same. The way each word is pronounced is more or less 빋, which is not a word, period.

That is probably one of the more challenging things about Korean.

[羽之助]

I was going to ask "Isn't reading Korean difficult because, with no hanja, you have a lot of homophones that were previously represented by hanja in the sentence?" but Rika answered it for me with her verbal-vs-written context comment.

And it's easy to guess the readings of kanji, for on-yomi at least. 旦 is tan, so 胆,担,坦,但 and 疸 are also tan. For native words like 考える or 用いる, the readings have no apparent system because the characters were just stuck onto existing Japanese words that seemed appropriate ...

I wish there had been a Ministry of Importing Chinese Characters back in the Heian Period to set standards ...

漢字輸入局！

[gyoza]

On reading Chinese: I've always found it extremely difficult, because when a modifier is added to a word, sometimes the pronunciation changes and other times it doesn't. The same modifier also has different effects on different words. So there really isn't any kind of consistent logic you can apply to accurately guess the pronounciation of an unfamiliar word.

[Luis Sanchez]

Well I know how to speak english and spanish. I'm going to learn japanese, chinese (mandarin), korean, and hebrew. what about yall?