The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

@popetron

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BTW in China, they don’t have kana so every foreign name has to be written using hanzi. Nicolas Cage is: 尼古拉斯·凯奇

尼 = nun
古 = old
拉 = pull
斯 = this
凱 = victory song
奇 = strange

So Nicolas Cage in Chinese = a strange old nun pulls this victory song

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There are still trends in which hanzi are used for transcription though. Typically, fairly meaningless or neutral hanzi are used for foreign names or sounds, and you can tell that their meanings don’t really link up. Ones with positive meanings are also often preferred, though potentially negative hanzi can also be chosen, as rare as they are now.

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Can I get some help understanding this label on a secondhand figure?

It’s

開封済

I know unopened is 未開封 and I have another box that has that label. What about 開封済 though? Is that just previously opened but has all parts or what?

I’m pretty sure it just means it’s already opened and doesn’t indicate anything else about the state of the contents. (Presumably the absence of other information means everything is there, but it’s not stated explicitly.)

See Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary and 済み(ずみ)の意味 - goo国語辞書 for more information on the suffix 済み.

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Interesting! I had been just thinking of 済 as meaning finished or ended. I hadn’t considered in compounds that it’d mean the preceding verb had happened. Thank you!

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What’s the difference between (いぬ) and (いぬ)? All I can find for the first is that it’s used in a Jujutsu Kaisen’s character’s name.

The first is kind of the old “dog” kanji, I think. It’s used in words like 天狗. @Jonapedia might know more?

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In this particular context it’s standing as its own word and while I understand what’s being said, I’m trying to figure out the nuance

Apparently long ago, dogs were sometimes distinguished by size, where small dogs and puppies would be 狗, but that is archaic now.

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Ahhh, that makes sense

What’s up with the stroke order for 歩? Why is it so weird? The トesque radical is drawn BEFORE the stick on the left, and the little drops come before the big slide! Shouldn’t the radicals on the left be drawn first and little things after big slides?

Interesting point, I never noticed…
I usually write 歩 as a combination of 止 and 少.

I just checked with Jisho and that’s the correct stroke order. But I sometimes get the upper part wrong.

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Yeah but WHY, what rules are applying here?

Well, the top-left to bottom-right rule is not absolute. Maybe it has more to do with the radical composition? Notice that 少 consists of 小 and the slide. 止 has 3 radicals (well, sort of).

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I’m terribly sorry. I had never realized 止 had this stroke order! Nor did I realize the part down there was a 少. Of course 歩 is written like that! Big oof. Sorry.

I’m not trying to be Mr Smarty Pants :stuck_out_tongue: . I’m just throwing suggestions. After writing lots of kanji I stopped paying attention to the “why”.

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Not really, sadly. In Mandarin, the old/literary kanji is 犬. 狗 is what we all use today.

The left-to-right rule is for components, usually units that you can easily isolate and which have a specific meaning. In other words, they’re usually for things that are listed as usual radicals in actual dictionaries. Also, the kanji concerned has to have a clear lefthand component and righthand component (or three vertical side-by-side components), which is not the case here.

止 is a kanji in its own right, as you probably know. It’s used to mean ‘stop’ now, but traditionally, it was the shape of a foot. The bottom half of 歩 is the same thing, but stylised and transformed differently. It’s two feet, like footprints on the sand, hence the act of walking, or the footsteps themselves. Here are some older forms:
image

Since we have two components here in a top-and-bottom arrangement, we write the top half first. As for everything else you mentioned… central vertical strokes that end in a flick or otherwise link to other strokes tend to be written first and help to centre the kanji. They’re written last when they’re long and go right through the entire kanji without needing to link up to anything else, like in 中. And no, little things don’t always come after big slides, especially if the slide doesn’t link back to those little things. You’ll notice that when dots/dashes are written last, they’re usually preceded by a stroke ending in a flick, like in 心.The kanji flows much better that way.

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On this stroke subject - Why is the 夂 in 修 three strokes but two in 客?

How could it be 2? Isn’t the difference usually between 攵 (4 strokes) and 夂 (3 strokes)? I don’t remember the history off the top of my head, but they’re not the same element, despite looking similar.

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