gillian wrote::roll: I have been trying to learn some more Kanjis via the JLPT tests in the Self Study section. An awful lot of readings occur for some characters and I cannot always see the connexion, But what puzzles me most are the readings for countries. Is there any explanation as to how these came about. So far I have encountered Canada, Italy, Germany and Turkey.
I suspect this is too big a subject for you to cover but it is fascinating.
I'd say there's just about no chance they'll do a lesson about this, as it's a writing/trivia thing, not a listening thing. Do a Wikipedia search for "ateji". The characters used in country names were selected primarily for their sound, not for their meaning.
Some "common" country names are:
亜
米利加=アメリカ=America
阿
蘭陀=オランダ=Holland
仏蘭西=フランス=France
独逸=ドイツ=Germany
西班牙=スペイン=Spain
伊太利(亜)=イタリア=Italy
印度=インド=India
and perhaps:
加奈陀=カナダ=Canada
I imagine all countries that existed prior to WWII can be written in kanji. But these are not really important to know, as they're almost always written in katakana. Generally, however, one of the characters has absorbed the meaning of the country as a whole. I've put those characters in bold in the examples above. Remembering these is a must for any serious learner.
In theory, you can use this single character to represent the country as a whole. For example, "America" = 米国, and "Japanese-American relations" = 日米関係. Stuff that the Japanese learned from the Dutch during the sakoku period is called 蘭学. The French and German languages are sometimes referred to as 仏語 and 独語 respectively. And so on.
The Japanese likely adopted this system from the Chinese, who are forced to write everything in hanzi, as they have no syllabary of their own. So "Canada" is written as 加拿大 in Chinese (which, oddly, is pronounced "jianada").
I have been trying to learn some more Kanjis via the JLPT tests in the Self Study section. An awful lot of readings occur for some characters and I cannot always see the connexion, But what puzzles me most are the readings for countries. Is there any explanation as to how these came about. So far I have encountered Canada, Italy, Germany and Turkey.
