I just learned 悪女 and 悪人: Is there something like 悪男?

I looked at Jisho but did not find any kanji for “evil man”. Jisho also gives “ugly” as another meaning to 悪女. Does anyone know if there is a kanji for “evil man”?

One of the meanings of 漢 (the かん in 漢字 かんじ) is man.

悪漢 (あっかん)
悪いことをする男
It is an obscure, old-fashioned word.

This “man” meaning for 漢 is also seen in 痴漢 (ちかん molester)

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Wait, this makes perfect sense. I just assumed 痴漢 had some obscure racist etymology.

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I thought in this case, it was Chinese (China) as it listed as a noun on Jisho (as-well as Man). I remember when I first started I was wondering why kanji wasnt cyuuji as I thought kanji would make more sense being korean characters then it would matche 中国 & 韓国.

Is there any etymology with a slight at China when this character is used for Bad/Bad things involving man?

Off topic I also remember a news article saying the kanji for germany is racist 独 animal&insect. I think that was just a guy getting a news article and throwing a fuss.

You cut off the part of my post where I said “One of the meanings.” Everyone knows the “Chinese” meaning. People are surprised by the “man” meaning. I didn’t say it means “man” in the word 漢字. I just said it’s the same kanji character.

Wiktionary lists “man” as one of the meanings in Chinese as well. So it’s not just “man” in Japanese.

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That reminds me, one of my favorite party trick is to ask natives to read おとこ. They’re often surprised by it :stuck_out_tongue:
(I know, I mentioned that before on the forum)

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A little off-topic, but how did you write the hiragana on top of the kanji?

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Quick tip: If you quote the full post, you can see the formatted text.

In this particular case, it’s:

<ruby>漢<rt>おとこ</rt></ruby>
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I did try quoting it but it doesn’t seem to show the formatting; in fact it changed the formatting :confused:

image

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Something new I learnt today! I have been quoting my highlighting the text and then pressing the ‘quote’ button.

Thanks for this :smiley:

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facepalms
But it means ‘alone,’ and the meaning is irrelevant to its use as 当て字. America isn’t acrually rice country either. Ugggghhhh
I assume you know that, this has just come up a couple times to me recently and uggghh

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Interestingly 漢 doesn’t mean Chinese, it means ancient Chinese. As in people of the Han, the Han dynasty, … You already need a good level of misunderstanding to turn this in a racist slur some people seem so fond of around here.

But at least the Han seemed to have a very high opinion of themselves, they considered themselves as the real people or “men” and everyone else as “barbarians” (as it is commonly translated, anyway).

I hope that guy was at least German himself, I don’t need people who are offended in my name because they are making a career out of it.

From my observation Germany is held in exceptionally high regard in Asia.

(And at least they didn’t use 毒, there are not so many options for this :slight_smile:)

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You might call it a 漢違い

…I’ll see myself out

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Hmm 漢字替え?

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@Leebo, sorry misread the sentence.

@acm2010 Yes, he was a German Professor in ancient languages or the history of languages or something along those lines. I remember thinking does that mean he knows the languages that he talks about or is it more higher level overview kind of thing. I also believed he mentioned alone, but he was still appealing for only the Kana version to be used forwards-onwards. I tried finding the news article that popped up on google news app a while ago, but haven’t been able to find.

I never knew of the Han dynasty, that’s interesting to know the root.

I would be interested so see the reasons he gives there. On Wikipedia I found that the ateji for country names were imported from China, where jesuits (sp?) were helping to create a translated world map.

It’s hard to be racist when some Italians told some Chinese to do it that way and you just copied it.


It’s a bit confusing that Han is read kan in Japanese :slight_smile: The kanji are called hanzi in Chinese, but it’s the same thing.

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Makes sense. That’s why 痴女(ちじょ)became a thing.

Here is the link: German linguist living in Japan says kanji characters used for Germany are discriminatory | SoraNews24 -Japan News- Even being an academic, I really feel nauseated with those attempts to sanitize the language.

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Thanks for the link. I think i read the article on another source, but yeah that was it.

I also just @acm2010 comment about at least they didn’t use 毒 as I just practical came across this Kanji in level 15 i didnt get the reference right away for it being doku, i literally just gone through a review when it popped up. Hopefully it wont become a leech now. :slight_smile:

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