Biggest Realizations / Mind Blows You've Experienced Learning Japanese: Emoji means what?!?!

Oh, and I have to question your use of “simplified words” with regard to the words of Japanese origin.

There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with the language that existed before kanji were imported. You’re envisioning that they go back to some kind of more “pure” form of language, but wouldn’t such a thing actually exclude kanji and Sino-Japanese altogether?

Pardons, but I have a little trouble comprehending your query, what reference did I make to “simplified words,” if you could refresh me a tad? Like, what do you mean?

It comes off like you are the one judging Japanese people for using the words that originally existed in their language in the first place. Words of Japanese origin are not inherently “simpler,” they merely take on that appearance by being the words of spoken language, and are thus more readily encountered than words used more often in writing.

Ah, I completely understand that. I did not mean to do so on this forum. I have complete respect for however anyone wants to express themselves in Japanese, it’s not my language, anyway.

When I write this happens sometimes, but given my writing style choice, like we said that’s the whole thing, am I right? :joy:

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Oh yeah. Not sure if that one was intentional, but I love when you can use small ideas like this to connect you knowledge. I never got anything regarding 未 or 記 wrong after that point!

One I realized a few months ago was that 切腹 and 腹切 (which have similar-ish meanings) use the same kanji just flipped. It must have taken me so long to realize since I was focused on the readings and not the kanji.

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Yesterday i realized, that these findish nouns with い-ending are just substantives from verbs -.-’

戦う → 戦い
笑う → お笑い

~T :lion:

You can do that with pretty much every verb to turn it into a noun - just turn the last う sound into い

yeah, theoretcly i knew this… but yeah… i always was angry about this i-ending-nouns because i thought they were excepitions to the “every word with a i-ending is a i-adjective”-rule… but the just fit another rule so now i like them again :slight_smile:

~T :lion:

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You may be interested in a language known as “Chinese”.

never saw your later comments about Chinese but whatever :man_shrugging:

Yes indeed I am lol.

俞然,其係泰正君説之,哈哈 !

音訓 : おん (sound) and くん (Lesson). the heard reading and the learned reading.

The meaning of 訓 in Chinese at the time the kanji was imported, was something along the lines of “to explain difficult words with simpler words.” The Japanese extended that idea conceptually to include the idea of applying a Japanese word to a Chinese character. Everyone knows the Japanese word, and you can use it to show the meaning of the Chinese character.

(loosely translated from here with my own thoughts as well)

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My biggest realization is that Japanese, and the Japanese culture would not be what it is without chinese culture, and writing.

Thanks for clarifying!

One of my favorite life realizations is that most systems of writing numbers starts with literal representations that break down around 4 or 5. That’s where your brain stops being able to differentiate distinct marks and just goes “IDK, a lot of lines, don’t ask me”. Like you can tell how many marks are here III but you can’t tell at a glance that IIIIII is 6.

This works with arabic (1, 2, 3 are cursive-ish versions of |, 二、and 三 tally marks, but then it gets weird at 4 and beyond, which evolved from “+”)

Actual tally marks |, ||, |||, |||| and then |||| with a slash to break into 5

Chinese/Japanese 一、二、三but then it gets irregular at 4, 四

Roman numerals go I, II, III, IV, irregular at four marks.

It’s really cool how widespread and universal that is, and what it tells us about the human brain and how it counts and thinks of things as a group

(Also, a few languages have systems of counting that tend to go “one, two, many”: Is “one, two, many” a myth? | The Number Warrior )

*Edit: ALSO from that link above, that might have something to do with why secondary counting systems (first, second, third, fourth) are most irregular for the first couple of numbers but regular after that (fifteenth, tenth) in a lot of languages

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Yeah it’s actually bigger than people like to give credit for amongst Japanese fanatics. When considering the vast amount of language loan from mainland China (and great proportion to 国字 kokuji) you gotta give respects.

I respect the love people have for anime and hentai though.

That moment when immersion kicks in and you can say “I understand this and I don’t know why”

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