During discussions with my collaborators yesterday we ended up discussing the present evolution of Japanese. Explanation of this requires a quick description of Japanese writing systems. For those of you who know about this, you may wish to skip down to below the “read the rest of this post” marker.<\/p>\n
Japanese Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n There are three main elements to Japanese writing: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana and Katakana, collectively referred to as kana, are a syllabic phonetic system. There is very little “spelling”, although the pronunciation and dictation are not quite as simple as Japanese teachers first present (is anything?). The two kana systems have various usages historically but present usage is that hiragana, a more “cursive” script is used for Japanese words and word fragments (see below on kanji usage for word-fragment usage) such as desu (\u00e3\u0081\u00a7\u00e3\u0081\u2122), while katakana, the more blocky or angular script is used for Western loan words such as camera (\u00e3\u201a\u00ab\u00e3\u0192\u00a1\u00e3\u0192\u00a9). The kana were derived from phonetic simplifications of imported kanji (see below).<\/p>\n The Japanese Kanji are derived from three different imports of Chinese Kanji characters. These importations were sometimes based on the sounds of the characters, sometimes on their meanings, and sometimes on both. In addition, original misunderstandings of sound or meaning were possible and divergences in both spoken language, kanji usage, and kanji presentation have now led to a significant divergence of the kanji in use. Until about twenty years ago, however, it was still common in schools to study Chinese literature by reading the kanji in Japanese. This practice seems to have mostly been dropped, possibly except for some private schools. Partly because of the way the kanji were imported. When using kanji, there are usually at least two and often more than two possible phonetic “readings” of the characters – based both on multiple phonetic imports from China and also on different spoken words in Japanese represented by the same kanji. Just to make things more complicated kanji may have overlapping meanings with the same or difference readings. A typical written sentence in Japanese will contain multiple kanji with hiragana used for parts of speech: particles (a bit like English prepositions, conjunctions etc) declensions and conjugations. For example, the kanji \u00e4\u00b8\u0160 with conceptual meaning of above, over, rise, raise etc. is read as “a” in \u00e4\u00b8\u0160\u00e3\u0081\u2019\u00e3\u201a\u2039 (ageru: raise or give) and in \u00e4\u00b8\u0160\u00e3\u0081\u0152\u00e3\u201a\u2039 (agaru: rise) in transitive and intransitive variants of the same verb, but is also read as “oo-eh” in \u00e4\u00b8\u0160\u00e3\u0081\u00ab (ue ni: on top of or above). The hiragana \u00e3\u0081\u2019, \u00e3\u0081\u0152 and \u00e3\u0081\u00ab indicate the correct phonetic reading. When kanji are used in multiple kanji “words” there is a specific reading of the combination, usually but not universally, based on the Chinese phonetic reading. Some close phonetic variants such as kawa\/gawa (\u00e5\u00b7\u009d), ta\/da (\u00e7\u201d\u00b0) occur in different combinations due to euphony (sounding good) or ease of pronunciation.<\/p>\n OK, now you’re ready to appreciate some modern Japanese written puns. Japan used to have a national rail system called JR (Japan Rail) as well as local commuter lines operated by private companies in Tokyo (and maybe some other cities). It was broken up in a similar way to the British Rail privatisation. Before this, however, the kanji name of JR commuter lines in the Metropolitan Tokyo area was \u00e5\u203a\u00bd\u00e9\u203a\u00bb koku den. koku is the word\/kanji for country\/nation\/national and den is the word\/kanji for electricity, short for \u00e9\u203a\u00bb\u00e8\u00bb\u0160 densha: electric car, i.e. train. Another of the many kanji with reading koku is \u00e9\u2026\u00b7 which means cruel or harsh. Thus in writing the publicly-owned commuter rail service was often jokingly referred to as \u00e9\u2026\u00b7\u00e9\u203a\u00bb or cruel rail.<\/p>\n On a similar transport note, and one which I have personal experience of, is the word for the “commute” or “journey to work”. As I’ve mentioned before, the Tokyo trains can get extremely crowded such that some of the passengers can’t even find somewhere for their feet and everyone has to coordinate their breathing. The old word for commute was \u00e9\u20ac\u0161\u00e5\u2039\u00a4 tsuu kin: journey plus work. Another kanji with reading tsuu is \u00e7\u2014\u203a meaning painful (also read as ita in \u00e7\u2014\u203a\u00e3\u0081\u201e). Thus instead of \u00e9\u20ac\u0161\u00e5\u2039\u00a4 journey (to) work for commute, we have \u00e7\u2014\u203a\u00e5\u2039\u00a4 painful (part of) work for commute.<\/p>\n Kanji may be one of the parts of learning Japanese that add significant complexity to becoming fluent in the language, but they can also add significant amounts of fun.<\/p>\n (Note about train \u00e9\u203a\u00bb\u00e8\u00bb\u0160: Since electric car is the word used for train and \u00e8\u00bb\u0160 read as kuruma is the word for car, it will be interesting to see how electric automobiles are named as they become more common in Japan and elsewhere. I suspect, though I have not checked, that hybrid petrol\/electric cars are called \u00e3\u0192\u008f\u00e3\u201a\u00a4\u00e3\u0192\u2013\u00e3\u0192\u00aa\u00e3\u0192\u2030 haiburido i.e. hybrid as a loan word.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During discussions with my collaborators yesterday we ended up discussing the present evolution of Japanese. Explanation of this requires a quick description of Japanese writing systems. For those of you who know about this, you may wish to skip down to below the “read the rest of this post” marker. 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\nJapanese Evolution and Puns<\/strong><\/p>\n