As my journey through WK continued, I noticed some interesting patterns.
生れる、産まれる
丸い、円い
直す、治す
The entry for suggests these homophones (I am ignoring pitch, for the moment) are due to a single Japanese word mapping to two (or more) Chinese ones.
My curiosity now extends in this direction, and I have more time to read books than look at screens.
Can anyone recommend a good book on Japanese linguistic history, preferably in English? My reading level is barely N4 at present, and I expect it to be a while before I could appreciate an in-depth work.
The one I own is A History of the Japanese Language by Bjarke Frellesvig. This is an academic text rather than one aimed at a popular audience, but as a non linguist I was able to work through it without massive difficulty. It’s not too outrageously expensive either – Amazon UK has it for 36 quid for paperback or kindle.
On the writing system in particular I also have A History of Writing in Japan by Christopher Seeley.
I don’t think homophone is the correct term for this (although I may be mistaken), those are just the same root word with spelling differences, not completely distinct words happening to be pronounced the same like knight/night. An equivalent in English would be something like jail/gaol, color/colour or fairy/faery for instance. Sometimes the spelling carries a nuance in writing (such as 治す・直す), and in these cases using the wrong spelling can in some situations be considered a mistake/typo, but many cases it’s stylistic and fairly arbitrary. At any rate usually the spelling just narrows the meaning of the word in writing, it doesn’t distinguish a completely different meaning. なおす still always mean that you’re fixing something.
As you mention the spelling differences usually derive from Japonic vocab not always mapping well to Chinese and therefore you end up with variants in spelling for all sorts of reasons. Since kunyomi usage is driven purely by meaning and ignores the phonetics, it makes sense that you could map several Chinese characters semantically to a single Japonic root.
Thank you for that; somehow I missed it when I was exploring Tofugu last year.
Interesting, but I am looking for for the Why/How s of such cases, along with explorations of the causes of other delightful idiosyncrasies in Japanese.
Thanks, I will look out for those. Academic writing is no trouble.
I am also considering Japanese: A Linguistic Introduction, by Yoko Hasegawa.
I would have used homonym, as per English linguistics they are both homophones and homographs. I do not know of a categorical word that covers “same meaning, different spelling” whether it be regional (color/colour) or historical variants (gaol/jail).
I do appreciate that WaniKani sometimes goes into the nuance of definitions, (though sometimes it doesn’t) and my Japanese-English dictionary can help, but provides nuance of usage without depth of explanation. And that is what I enjoy digging into, in English and German.
Looking at pure Japanese sources I see two terms being used: 同音異義語 (same sound, different meaning) which I see mostly used to talk about words like 意外 and 以外 or 橋 and 箸 (words where the homophony is really accidental) although I also sometimes see it used for the variant kun spellings we’re discussing here.
There is however a more specific term for this specific thing: 同訓異字 (same Kun different character) which seems to be the preferred term for 合う・会う・遭う、治す・直す、聞く・聴く・訊く and other similar “alternative spellings”.
I’ve also had Tsujimura’s An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics recommended to me before, but haven’t got round to buying it. Given the title I would expect it to be an examination of the language as it is today rather than a view of its history, though.