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Origins of Countries and Kanji | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5053 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 1 of 7 13 February 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I recently began studying the Kanji with Hadamitzky and Spahn's Complete guide to the
Japanese writing system. I gained a decent knowledge of the characters and began to wonder about the origins of certain characters and the countries attached to them. For example the word for the US and the Americas is 米 or Bei which is also the word for rice. Is this because the Americas import alot of rice? Also, there are other interesting ones like 独 for Germany, which also happens to mean alone. 満 meaning Manchuria and also full or fulfill. Perhaps because Manchuria was a large area with a high population? Another one I found interesting was 英 for England\English and also Brilliant, talented and gifted. My hypothesis is that because English is a hard language for ESL learners and particularly in Asia, it therefore takes a "gifted" person to learn it. Others like 西 for Spain and west makes sense as they were traders that came from the west. I'd be interested in hearing about more kanji\hanji that are also linked to countries and their meanings. Edited by CaucusWolf on 13 February 2014 at 12:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5741 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 7 13 February 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
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My understanding is that they are chosen foremost for their phonetic similarity to the name of the country in its local language, and the meaning of the character is only secondary. America used to be called 米利堅(メリケン). The first character was taken from that to form 米国.
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5380 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 7 13 February 2014 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, in Chinese, America is the beautiful country (美國), not the rice country. The hanzi only sounds its name out (měi like America). Anyway, if you find rice and beauty in your country, be blessed. Edited by Cabaire on 13 February 2014 at 2:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4553 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 7 13 February 2014 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Fun fact: originally the character used for Russia was 魯, pronounced "ro" and meaning "foolish". It was even used in the original text of the Treaty of Shimoda of 1855, which started official Russo-Japanese diplomatic relations. It wasn't until 1877 that the Russian diplomats stationed in Japan protested and requested its replacement with the identically pronounced 露 ("dew"), which remains in use to this day (although many if not most publications reserve 露 for the Russian Empire and represent modern Russia with the katakana ロ). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5053 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 5 of 7 13 February 2014 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd be interested in knowing the similarities between Russian and Japanese. I know they had a
significant amount of contact. Was Japanese easy for you to learn? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4553 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 6 of 7 15 February 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm afraid there aren't that many similarities. The contacts between the two countries only were fully established only in the 19th century and the languages didn't really influence each other much beyond a few loanwords here and there. There are some subtle similarities between keigo and the honorific speech of pre-Revolution Russia, but the two systems evolved completely independently of each other, and the Russian one has been mostly lost in modern speech. It might be a bit easier for a native speaker of Russian to get used to Japanese sentence structure than for a native speaker of English, due to things like more flexible word order or greater pro-drop qualities (even if it's noticeably less pro-drop than many other Slavic languages), but other than that Japanese is just as alien to us as it is to you.
For me personally Kazakh was actually a much better introduction to Japanese, since they're both agglutinative and have many similarities in conjugation and declension patterns. The downside is that, since I don't live in Kazakhstan any more and don't get regular practice in the language, it's very easy for Japanese to interfere with my Kazakh. Now I find it very hard to formulate a sentence in Kazakh without inserting random Japanese words, particles or conjugatons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5564 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 7 of 7 17 February 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
All of these kanji, with the exception of Manchuria (満州), are used for phonetic reasons. There is no connection with the normal meaning of the characters. Furthermore, they are all abbreviations of a full phonetic reading. 亜米利加 = アメリカ = America (アメリカ合衆国 is the official name for the USA) 独逸 = ドイツ = Germany 英吉利 = イギリス = England 西班牙 = スペイン = Spain America uses the second character 米 only because a different country uses 亜 (亜国 = Argentina). Here are some more: 亜爾然丁 = アルゼンチン = Argentina 濠太剌利 = オーストラリア = Australia 仏蘭西 = フランス = France 印度 = インド = India 露西亜 = ロシア = Russia 亜細亜 = アジア = Asia 阿弗利加 = アフリカ = Africa 欧羅巴 = ヨーロッパ = Europe 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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