| Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary |
I feel that I’ve overloaded recent blogs, making us all work way too hard. There’s been too much consideration of fine distinctions between similar kanji, too many examples, too many links to click, and too much to read.
So it’s time for an extended vacation from all that hard work—from all that thinking. (It sometimes seems as though we’re never allowed to give our brains a rest, doesn’t it? So much to stuff in there and keep straight.)
I’ve decided that, over the next month or so, I’ll return to the thing that inspires me most about kanji—cool compounds. In each blog, I’ll present some great compounds, grouping them according to a theme (just to provide a reassuring sense of order) and not saying a lot more about them. OK, there’s my cue to stop talking and let you enjoy some combinations that sparkle, sizzle, and inspire with their rightness!
Change
Partly thanks to Obama, the “change” kanji just became “kanji of the year” in Japan. But, as you’ll see in the list below, several kanji mean “change.” The vote went to 変 (HEN, ka(eru), ka(waru)), which appears in 変心, the first compound here. I believe 変心 isn’t the kind of change any politician has been promising!
変心 (henshin: to change + heart, mind) = fickleness
悪化 (akka: bad + to change) = deterioration
感化される (kanka sareru: to be changed + feelings) = to be influenced, to be inspired
化学 (kagaku: to change + study) = chemistryChemistry is the study of change! So is economics, these days!
改心 (kaishin: to rectify + heart, mind) = conversion, reform
Time for a quick quiz.
|
Quick Quiz What does the following compound mean? How can something stay the same and change?
|
Grass
Seems like a big leap from “change” to “grass,” huh? Well, actually, one kanji combines the two concepts:
花 (KA, hana: flower) is grass (
) that changes (化).
But to return to cool compounds (as opposed to cool kanji), here are two fun words having to do with grass:
海草 (kaisō: sea + grass) = seaweed
草分け (kusawake: grass + to divide) = pioneer, pathfinderAh—a kun-kun combination, so this is probably an old Japanese word! I love stumbling upon those. Makes me feel like an archaeologist who has discovered a relic of an earlier people—and a fascinating, witty group of people, at that.
The second compound, 草分け, may seem counterintuitive. After all, don’t snakes divide grass? How are they pioneers (except for showing up in the Garden of Eden early in the game)? Well, if you forget about snakes and think instead of a trailblazer—one who shows us the way by blazing a trail—you’ll see that that’s nearly the same as dividing grass!
Water and Ice
OK, shifting gears again, let’s move from grass to water and ice:
汚水 (osui: dirty + water) = sewage
氷解 (hyōkai: ice + to dissolve) = thawing, melting
The first compound may not be so nice to think about, but it couldn’t be more accurate. Well, actually, it could, but I don’t want it to be more accurate!
On that note, it’s time for your Verbal Logic Quiz!
