Life advice in kanji relations in words

I see it from time to time, that the association of kanji to form one word is a famous proverb and advice. I’m jewish so I see mine.
Right now I saw:

心配 worry = heart distribute.
as in proverbs 12:25: ‘A worry in a man’s heart → converse it’.

a lot of the times the worry is healed by the other person not getting flustered hearing about it, for example.

What did YOU come upon?

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These are a thing. Have you studied 四字熟語 (よじじゅくご) yet? Literally “four character idiomatic expression”. For instance, 一期一会 (いちごいちえ), “one life, one encounter”.

But there are shorter and longer expressions, like 如是 (にょぜ), “as it is”.
Or 本来無一物 (ほんらいむいちぶつ), “originally there was not one thing”.

It is wonderful to just stumble on words that put meanings together in interesting ways. This is one of the delights of kanji. :slight_smile:

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Didn’t get to those yet. I see japan as a secluded island where a lot of knowledge didn’t have time yet to wither but not small enough to be forgotten by hardships.

God willing i’ll post more as I see them. thanks.

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There are threads here devoted to yojijukugo. Also, they appear on Japanese proficiency exams. Older Japanese people complain that the younger generations are not learning them.

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Nice to know. But a lot of the yojijukugo are less of the straight up advice that i’m referring to and more like mottoes or figure of speech I feel.

Well, that’s true that many aren’t advice.

To be fair though, I’m not sure that 心配 is, strictly speaking, structured as advice. It comes from 心配り (こころくばり), which is “thoughtfulness” or “taking care of.” Over time people adapted the onyomi to it. It’s a description of an action, but there’s no real “call to action” as far as I can tell.

Bonus for people who are interested in jukugo etymology, usually when a character is composed of one character representing an action, and one character representing the object of that action, they will be in that order respectively (着席 arrive > seat, sit down; 登山 climb > mountain, mountain climbing). The above mentioned transition from 心配り to 心配 is why 心配 breaks this rule of thumb.

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Thank you for the science of those.
Yeah it’s a sound advice even if the poet didn’t mean it so it’s still great.

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