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Am I crazy? Who’s to say? By Einstein’s definition, I may well be. He said insanity was repeatedly doing the same thing while hoping for a different outcome. As I write this, I’m drinking caffeinated tea at 7 p.m. All the while, I’m telling myself that it won’t affect my sleep. At some deeper level, I also know that if tea has kept me awake on a thousand other occasions, I can probably expect some misery tonight. Crazy, right? Yes, but I can’t help it, because I’m crazy about black and green tea. (I mean, black tea and green tea. Not tea that’s simultaneously black and green.)
Crazy—there’s that word again. When you speak of being “crazy about something,” it has nothing to do with insanity … or does it? Passion is worlds apart from insanity, but they both have to do with being imbalanced and out of control. The word “fan” comes from “fanatic” but has lost its associations with craziness. Similarly, “craze” (as in fad) doesn’t conjure up images of “crazy,” even though the words are nearly identical.
I’m not the only one to have mulled over these issues. When I asked a Japanese photographer whether I could include a photo of his in my book Crazy for Kanji, he said it depended on my answers to several questions, including these:
• Is Crazy for Kanji a book about insanity?
• Am I a member of a cult?
(The answer to both is no.)
Here’s what he wrote:
単語のままとれば、「熱狂的な」というように認識したのですが、単語の本来の意味、「発狂した」といった含みを込めた意味合いが無いかという確認。
Tango no mama toreba, “nekkyōtekina” to iu yō ni ninshiki shita no desu ga, tango no honrai no imi, “hakkyō shita” to itta fukumi o kometa imiai ga nai ka to iu kakunin.
To take a word by itself, I recognized “crazy,” so I want to confirm that “crazy about something” doesn’t have the nuance of the original meaning, “insane,” hidden inside.
Breakdown of Words,
Plus More on Our Exchange …
As of this month, Crazy for Kanji is out—officially, finally, really truly out!!! I’m thrilled that this project has come to fruition, especially because the topic and the content are so close to my heart. At the same time, as the book travels through the world, far from my control, I’m slightly unsettled to realize that the cover inextricably links my name with craziness!
To learn more about the contents and approach, you can see my website, as well as sample pages posted on JPod. The book is available on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In an effort to come to terms with this (and to celebrate something I’ve been anticipating for nearly four years!), I’d like to spend the next few blogs exploring kanji for “craziness.” Actually, that’s pretty crazy right there—”crazy for kanji” has led to “kanji for craziness.”
How to Go Crazy? Let Me Count the Ways
So how do the Japanese refer to “craziness”? There seem to be so many ways that it’s downright … crazy!
The photographer used two terms for “crazy”:
熱狂的 (nekkyōteki: wildly enthusiastic; crazy (about something))
enthusiastic + crazy + adjectival suffix発狂した (hakkyō shita: mad, crazy, insane)
to become + crazy
The first term, 熱狂的, is obviously about wild enthusiasm. The second one, 発狂した, is sheer madness, a type of craziness we’ll leave for another week.
Though they’re so different, both terms contain 狂 at their cores. In fact, as we’ll see in coming weeks, 狂 lurks inside a vast number of words concerning craziness.
What is this character that combines “dog” (
) and “king” (王)? Here’s the dirty low-down:
狂 (KYŌ, kuru(u): lunatic, mad; suffix meaning “enthusiast” or someone with a certain mental abnormality)
Sample Sentence with 狂 as a Suffix …
Henshall says that 王 acts phonetically in 狂 to express “convulsion” and that 狂 originally referred to a convulsing dog, or a mad dog, later coming to mean “mad” in general.
A crazy dog? I have one of those, and his name is Kanji! So now we have “crazy for kanji,” “kanji for craziness,” and “crazy Kanji.” Makes one’s head spin!
Kanji, during an exercise in “swaddling,” which was supposed to make him calmer. It worked temporarily. Not sure why his tail looks transparent here! It must have been wagging.
Nekkyōteki
For the remainder of today’s blog, let’s focus on just 熱狂的 (nekkyōteki: wildly enthusiastic; crazy (about something)). Although this word seems to be positive, indicating overflowing enthusiasm, it actually can have positive or negative nuances.
Here’s a positive take on this term:
我々は熱狂的な阪神タイガースファンである。
Wareware wa nekkyōtekina Hanshin Taigāsu fan de aru.
We are enthusiastic Hanshin Tigers fans.我々 (wareware: we)
This is a very formal word, and I don’t know what it’s doing in this casual sentence.
阪神 (Hanshin: company name: railway, department store,
baseball team, etc.) Osaka (大阪) abbreviation +
Kobe (神戸) abbreviation
In the next sentence, the nuance of nekkyōtekina tends toward the negative:
熱狂的な報道の兆しはありましたか。
Nekkyōtekina hōdō no kizashi wa arimashita ka.
Were there any signs of the media frenzy (around the Cruise/Holmes wedding)?報道 (hōdō: information, report, journalism)
to inform + to convey
兆し (kizashi: sign)We saw this kanji just a few weeks ago.
Finally, here’s a sentence that’s downright negative about enthusiasm gone awry:
彼らは自分たちの信仰に熱狂している。
Karera wa jibuntachi no shinkō ni nekkyō shite iru.
They are fanatical in their beliefs.彼ら (karera: they)
自分たち (jibuntachi: themselves) self + part
信仰 (shinkō: (religious) faith, belief)
to have faith + to revere
Oh, wow, speaking of enthusiasm, I must tell you that I came across 仰 in a different context just one day before writing this. I found it in a very cool word, which I had tucked away for a future blog, but I’ll share it now—at the link.
OK, before my unbridled enthusiasm takes us down any more side paths, let’s head over to the Verbal Logic Quiz. Meet you there!
