Turning Over a New Leaf: Part 1
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
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With autumn in the air, the “leaf” kanji 葉 beckons, just asking to be explored. Its shape might look rather daunting, but if you break 葉 into three pieces, it’s much less intimidating. Let’s put that leaf under a microscope:
葉
At the top, we find the grass radical 
. Under that, we see 世, which means “world” (as in 世界, sekai: world, world + world). And at the bottom lies 木 (ki: tree). A leafy world consists of grass and trees! Under ordinary circumstances, the tree would be above the grass, but never mind.
Autumn Passage, Wasatch Mountains, Utah
Photo credit: Elizabeth Carmel
Yomi, Yomi, Yomi,
I Got Leaves in My Tummy
The yomi for 葉 are quite simple: YŌ and ha, as this pair of words illustrates:
落ち葉 (ochiba: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
Here, ha has turned into ba through voicing.
落葉 (rakuyō: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
In these compounds, the same characters appear in the same order, and the words have identical meanings. And yet ochiba and rakuyō sound nothing alike! Ochiba combines two kun-yomi, whereas rakuyō contains two on-yomi. And that alone accounts for the slipsiding sounds. No matter how many times I encounter such pairs, they blow my mind. (Therefore, we could consider these particular compounds to be leaf-blowers.)
On the subject of yomi surprises, I’m always thrown off when I find kun-yomi as short as ha. Kun-yomi tend to be mouthfuls, such as atarashii (新しい: new) and kanarazu (必ず: without fail). When I learned that ha was the kun-yomi for 葉, I wondered which other kanji had ha as their kun-yomi. You’ll find my answer at the next link.
Leaves of Poetry
Perhaps less surprisingly, the meanings of some 葉 compounds come across as sheer poetry:
露を宿した葉 (tsuyu o yadoshita ha: leaf heavy with dew)
dew + to dwell + leaf葉陰 (hakage: under the (shadow) of the leaves (of a tree))
leaf + shadow
This brings to mind languorous titles, such as Desire Under the Elms. It also makes me think of Shady Maple syrup. Either way, very pleasant connotations.
葉越し (hagoshi: seen through the leaves)
leaf + across, beyondA leaf-filtered view sounds lovely, though perhaps this word has a touch of the perverse!
For Even Stranger
Behavior Involving Foliage …
飛花落葉 (hika-rakuyō: Blossoms fall and leaves scatter; the impermanence of worldly things) to fly + flower + to fall + leaf
We’ve already seen the on-on combination rakuyō. When you preface that with the first kanji in 飛行機 (hikōki: airplane, to fly + to go + machine) and the kanji for “flower,” 花, you produce a compound with a quintessential bit of Japanese philosophy.
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
September 30th, 2007 at 2:38 am
It makes perfect sense. A leaf is a special case of grass on top of the world. The only way to get there is through a tall tree. Very logical! What isn’t logical is the kanji for car sticker. The complexity of 若葉マーク means Japanese also suffer from the same bureaucracy that we do at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Nothing is easy in those places.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Right. Hence the bumper sticker “Idiocracy” that I saw on a car earlier today. (Ah, we’re back to car stickers!)
Just as I think you’re saying, the meaning of 若葉マーク makes no sense to me. Can a native speaker fill us in on the origin of that expression?
October 1st, 2007 at 7:17 am
Not sure what is expected of a native speaker; support the 若葉マーク rule or explain the origin of the expression. I guess the latter. As we have seen in the saying “栴檀は双葉より芳し” (Genius shows from childhood), 双葉 means “infant” or “child” and 若葉 means the same. The mark tells you that the driver with a 若葉 sticker has acquired a driver’s license within a year, so watch out. I have no idea whether that has been effective in reducing accidents though.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:26 am
Oh! I didn’t expect that explanation at all! So the new driver is as “green” as a new leaf. Well, I guess that’s a lot more tactful than labeling the cars of new drivers with a big sign saying, “Potentially horrible driver!”
October 1st, 2007 at 3:54 pm
出刃 and 出歯: blade and tooth
Your HaHaHa section reminds me of an incident in elementary school when I was a kid. 出刃包丁 (deba-bōchō: thick knife used in cooking fish) is abbreviated as 出刃 (deba). One day, a girl reported to the teacher that Yaeko was cut by Taro’s “deba.” Imagine how shocked the teacher was! In fact, instead of a big knife, Taro was equipped with upper front teeth sticking out, 出歯 (deba), and that was what hurt Yaeko.
Here in the Tokyo area and possibly in eastern Japan in general, “teeth sticking out” are called 出っ歯 (deppa) but where I grew up (Hyōgo Prefecture) it was “deba.”
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:58 am
Great story! Thank so much for sharing that! I love hearing about how kanji misunderstandings can happen in speech, not just in typing! Also, 出っ歯 is a very cool compound: to come out + teeth.
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:55 am
[…] This is my leaf rubbing with the kanji for “leaf.” I just happened to run across that kanji in Eve Kurshner’s post over at Jpod101 blogs. […]
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:01 am
The previous comment seems to be a pingback (if I’m using the right geeky term). Ordinarily, I would delete it, but hey, she’s giving me (and JPod) some PR! That makes me feel so good that I won’t even grouse about the misspelling of my last name! Anyway, here’s the website for the Sinister Scribe:
thesinisterscribe.com/2007/10/01/fall-art-kit
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:24 am
It occurred to me as I was writing the last comment about 出刃 vs 出歯. The four “ha” kanji are unrelated according to Henshall, but the question of whether these WORDS are related with each other is another question: since these (葉、刃、羽、歯) are kun-yomi, I think it is possible that 刃 and 歯 have the same origin etymologically. Teeth could be weapons almost as dangerous as blades (though not relevant to mass destruction); not human teeth but teeth of other mammals.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:40 am
I’m so glad you made this interesting point. As I initially researched the issue, I felt that I wasn’t thinking very clearly, and it turns out I was right about that! Kanji etymology is one issue; the etymology of the spoken language is another issue altogether. Always good for me to have reminders of this difference.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Hi Eve,
Not sure how the pingback thing works either. I certainly didn’t put it there! But I’ll happily give you and Jpod good PR anytime I can. 
I tell my friends whenever they ask about this poace.
So sorry to have mis-spelled your name. I will fix ASAP!
Your leaf posts have been great and timed well with activities we are doing. Thanks! I’m going to try to add “wet falling leaves” to some leaf art we just did but I have to admit I’m a bit intimidated. LOL!
Ok, off to fix that mis-spell!
October 8th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Hi, Hope.
Thanks for the sweet note. And thanks for the spelling fix! It’s funny–you wouldn’t believe the trouble people have even with my FIRST name! Then again, I recently came across the surname Buzdiekir. Can you imagine how many misspellings and mispronunciations THAT person encounters?!
Great that you’re giving JPOD so much PR! I think every time someone cites a JPOD URL, a pingback shows up in the relevant section on JPOD, so they can track the amount of gossip about them on the Net! (It’s possible that I feigned ignorance about this in my last comment. I’m surrounded by tech-minded people, including my husband, and as I’m always teasing them about their geekiness, I have to do my best not to seem the same way! I think it’s a losing battle; they keep arguing that being a word geek or an English major geek is no better! And anyway, engineers and physicists seem to have the last laugh in the realm of salaries!)
Are you teaching your kids kanji?!?!? Or are you doing leaf activities, and then putting the kanji on yourself? In any case, I’d love to see your rendition of “wet falling leaves.” Send me a link when you’ve finished (if you want), and maybe we can make your kids into internationally famous leaf artists!
October 8th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Hi Eve!
We are not yet doing kanji though that may be changing soon. I am just adding the kanji to our artwork myself as a gentle introduction for my son. I will post a link when it is done.
My 9yo son has aspirations of living and working in Japan someday. So to support that goal, we are (thanks to Jpod) learning to speak Japanese AND enjoying it! We are also going to (I hope) attending a Japanese Conversation Club at the university here. Haven’t heard back from the director yet to see if a 9yo would be welcome.
Maybe we’ll be able to find a student there that will tutor for a reasonable fee…?
On a kind of related note… Friday we were fortunate to meet some people from the Imada Puppetry Group from the city of Iida in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. My son was thrilled to be able to speak with them a little. Ok, he was more than thrilled… exploding with enthusiasm is a better description. And (I think) they too were impressed by him. I’ve been letting his interest dictate how intense our studies are, so we may be taking our Japanese studies to the next level very soon! Exciting stuff. Thanks!
October 9th, 2007 at 3:34 am
That’s really inspiring, Hope! You’re well named!
Your son sounds amazing, not only with his cognitive/linguistic abilities but also with the clarity of his aspirations at age NINE!!! Wow!
I have a friend with the last name of Iida, but I didn’t realize it was also the name of a city. (Oops, did she tell me that?!)
Anyway, great job to both you and your son! I’ll be eager to hear of his progress.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Hello Eve,
I’m a long time browser of JapanesePod101 and was very surprised today to see a reference (link) to your wonderful blog on the KanjiClinic page. I was surprised as I had never noticed your blog on the JP101 site.
In the above blog (Turning Over a New Leaf), under Yomi, Yomi, Yomi, you mention that:
落ち葉 (ochiba: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
and
落葉 (rakuyō: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
are compounds. This is not true.
落ち葉 is not a compound but two individual kanji separated by ち. For this reason they take the kun-yomi readings as in the First Law of Kanji Reading (generally speaking - not a 100% rule but a good guide for beginners - Compound words, On-yomi - Individual Kanji, Kun-yomi).
落葉, on the other hand, is a compound word and therefore uses the on-yomi readings.
Keep up the fantastic work,
Tom
October 16th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Hi again Eve,
As Hiroshi mentioned in his posting of October 3rd, 2007 at 2:24 am about the Japanese etymological meaning of the four “ha” kanji (葉、刃、羽、歯) kun-yomi.
刃 and 歯 have the same origin etymologically as cutting “weapons”.
葉、刃、and 羽 could have the same origin etymologically as “shape” i.e. all three (leaves, knives or swords, and feathers) could be considered as “blade-shaped” objects.
“Aren’t Kanji wonderful”
Tom
October 17th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Thanks for the comments, Tom. But I’m going to have to disagree with your statement that 落ち葉 (and any other word with interstitial hiragana) is not a compound. A compound is simply a word. And this word (a combination of 2 kun-yomi) likely existed in Japan long before kanji entered the country. Then when kanji arrived, the Japanese assigned their spoken language to the written symbols. That’s why there’s often interstitial hiragana; the sound of the kanji doesn’t account fully for the inflections. If you merely said 落ち, that wouldn’t be a word (or not the word in question). The full word is 落ち葉. Similarly, when words have okurigana (that is, hiragana sticking off the tail end), the okurigana is part of the word. Reference books by Spahn, Halpern, and Nelson, not to mention many others, list compound after compound. When there are kun-yomi combinations, the books omit these. So if you saw 落葉 in Spahn, you wouldn’t even know that he might mean ochiba as a reading (as opposed to rakuyō). He doesn’t differentiate visually between kun-kun combos and on-on combos. Anyway, I hope that’s clearer now.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:31 am
As you originally mentioned the different kun-yomi and on-yomi “readings” for the same kanji appearing in the same order, I wanted to point out the “normal” rules for when one uses the different readings.
I think that we have to define better “Kanji Compound Word”. For me this is a word that is “written” with only Kanji and usually read using on-yomi - jukugo (熟語).
Words written in Kanji occurring in isolation - that is, written adjacent only to kana, not right next to other kanji, together with their okurigana that generally function either as a noun or as an inflected adjective or verb, or separated from another kanji by kana, are typically read using their kun-yomi or native Japanese readings.
As I mentioned earlier this is not a 100% rule but a good guide for beginners.
Tom
October 17th, 2007 at 1:38 am
If you consult the link “The Basics” (which appears at the top of each KC blog, and here it is again: http://blogs.japanesepod101.com/?page_id=678), you’ll see that I’ve explained the “normal” rules there.
Some further thoughts on what I was saying above …
The best indication that 落ち葉 is 1 word is that the BA of ochiBA is voiced. That is, if 葉 were read by itself, it would have the kun-yomi of “ha.” Instead, it has become “ba.” Voicing doesn’t happen unless two or more kanji are in the same compound.
Also, there are words such as 広島 (Hiroshima) that combine 2 kun-yomi and have no kana anywhere in sight.
Finally, I wanted to mention (just in case people are curious) that there’s such a thing as jūbako (重箱), which are hybrids of kun- and on-yomi. The word jūbako (重箱) itself is one such hybrid, as JŪ is an on-yomi, whereas bako is the voiced version of “hako,” a kun-yomi.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Sorry to take this off track a bit, but could someone point me to a page (or give me a list of rules) for when this unvoiced/voiced shift takes place, please?
Thank you!
October 17th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Fine to take the discussion off track! But what a tough question!
I compiled a list of voicing patterns (e.g., SH->J, T->D, etc.), and then I reread your question. You want to know WHEN such a thing occurs (i.e., what conditions have to be present for voicing to happen), right?
Aha … a little research has helped me learn that this phenomenon is called not only voicing (or 濁り, nigori, in Japanese) but also rendaku (連濁, to connect + voiced), which is voicing in the context of compounds (as opposed to simply in the syllabary, if that makes sense). Armed with that knowledge, I was able to find this link on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku
It’s full of LOTS of linguistics terms that mean nothing to me. But here’s the answer in the nutshell (text from the same page):
“Despite a number of rules which have been formulated to help explain the distribution of the effect of rendaku, there still remain many examples of words in which rendaku manifests in ways currently unpredictable. Some instances are linked with a lexical property as noted above but others may obey laws yet to be discovered. Rendaku thus remains partially unpredictable, sometimes presenting a problem even to native speakers …”
One example from the page highlighted how confusing and counterintuitive the issue truly is:
[yama] + [kawa] > [yamakawa] “mountains and rivers”
[yama] + [kawa] > [yamagawa] “mountain river.”
The explanation (if you can call it that, since again it means nothing to me):
“Rendaku also tends not to manifest itself in compounds which have the semantic value of “X and Y” (so-called dvandva or copulative compounds).”
Wait, I refuse to be defeated by this. Here’s what Wikipedia says about “dvandva or copulative compounds”:
“A dvandva or copulative or coordinative compound refers to two or more objects that could be connected in sense by the conjunction ‘and’.”
All that just to indicate that yamakawa means mtn AND river, whereas yamagawa doesn’t!
That’s the best I can do. Anyone else want to help?
October 17th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Actually 世 can mean generation, and works a lot better with the story when trying to remember the definition of 葉. You can picture one generation of a flower (which you said was grass) on a tree = a leaf. This way you place the two previous radicals ON the tree, so as not to forget their placement.
If you are looking for better ways to define your kanji, I would suggest checking out http://kanji.koohii.com/ which goes hand in hand with “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig. The best book to remember the Kanji PERIOD
October 18th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Re: Eve
That was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I didn’t have the slightest idea why it was “aozora” instead of “aosora”
Now I have a starting place… and another question. Any clues on how to differentiate between “yamakawa” and “yamagawa” when you’re reading kanji (without furigana)? Is there something other than merely context (which can be hard to extrapolate without knowing the meanings of all the words in a sentence)? Or should I just “practice, practice, practice”?
Again Thank you very much for all your effort!
Kaxx
October 18th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Thanks for the info., Tony.
And Kaxx (what a cool name!), it was absolutely my pleasure. Very rewarding to find the term “rendaku” and to learn more about it.
I’m afraid I can’t offer any guidance on how to differentiate yamakawa from yamagawa, since even native speakers seem to struggle with this. I’m sure context usually helps, but since the definitions of those two words are so close, I bet context may not always be enough!
One thought I do have is that native speakers probably work from their knowledge of the spoken language as they read. Because they already know the word “aozora,” they automatically read 青空 as such, without stopping to think about voicing.
And I think even gaijin do that to some extent. If you’re like me, you learned “sambyaku” early on, well before you knew any kanji. Because “sambyaku” is fairly well ingrained in my mind, I don’t think too hard about voicing when I see 三百. My thought process is more like, “Oh, that’s 300. Well, how do you say 300? Sambyaku.”
I think the key lies in seeing compounds holistically, just as we look at “Phoebe” and know what to do with it (whereas a nonnative speaker could easily stumble in trying to sound it out).
That’s probably not much help, but it’s the best I can offer!
October 18th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Eve “gaijin” (outsider) is a rather racist word. Let’s not perpetuate the Japanese racism. How about using the less offensive word “gaiKOKUjin” (foreigner) next time.
Ya’herd?
October 18th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
You know, I’ve heard mixed things about this word (though I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call it racist). One teacher even told me that no such word as “gaijin” even exists! I thought that was pretty strange. Anyway, do you know what the reasoning is behind “gaikokujin” as a better alternative? How does the insertion of KOKU soften it? I guess in the latter case, it’s the country that’s the outsider, not the person…. Is that how you understand it?
October 18th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
“gaikokujin” would be foreign country person, right? like Furansujin is a french person, gaikoku would just stand for any foreign country
I still wanna be called gaijin though.
Kaxx
October 26th, 2007 at 12:45 am
To Kaxx and Eve,
It must be a difficult to task to find a general rule of voicing shift in
Japanese. The question of whether a certain syllable is voiced or not must depend on the meaning of the compound, as Eve points out above, as well as the ease of hearing and pronunciation. Even if there were a rule, it must not be a simple rule to encompass all compounds.
Take Japanese surname; there are quite a few names that are pronounced in
a voiced or unvoiced form: 山崎(yamasaki; yamazaki), 五十嵐(ikarashi; igarashi), 宮川(miyakawa; miyagawa), etc. If you call Mr. Yamazaki “Yamasaki”, he will correct you, but there is no way of knowing which is the correct pronunciation for a particular 山崎. This fact alone will hint at the difficulty of finding a simple general rule about voicing.
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:32 am
@ Eve Kushner
I don’t know that I can help a lot, but I’d like to add something in hope that it clarifies 1 of your examples. There’s “yamakawa” & “yamagawa.” You already stated that the 1st means mountain(s) AND river(s) whereas the latter just means mountain(s), river(s). I think the main difference is that, despite its appearance, “yamakawa” is probably 2 words. Both words *would* look like this 山川 because there are no spaces between Japanese words, but if you were to read the 2 characters in a sentence, you would know whether they actually meant mountain(s) and river(s) or whether they were referring to the compound form, “yamagawa.” The compound form, I think, is only used for the name Yamagawa.
Just in case someone doesn’t know (& because of the possibility that, in the confusion between the 2 rivers, it was forgotten) the kana for “yamakawa” is やまかわ but the kana for “Yamagawa” is やまがわ. The only difference between the 2 is that the third kana, “ka,” turns into “ga.” But that’s important because “ga” is the muddy sound of “ka” and when compound words are spoken, the 1st kana character of 2nd of the 2 words often turns into it’s muddy sound (unless it doesn’t have one {ma - ま} or already is one {za - ざ}). So, because the name “Yamagawa” is used as a compound, & “yamakawa” (just 2 objects - in fact, when using romaji, you could even make this “yamakawa” into “yama kawa” ) is not, か (ka) turns into が (ga) when it is spoken.
Hopefully that clears things up a bit… or maybe it just makes them seem more complicated…. ^^;;
July 22nd, 2010 at 7:18 am
Thanks for giving all this input and for engaging with the issue so deeply! One tiny note (of little significance): I believe that when the rendaku web page defined yamagawa as
“mountain river,” that meant “river in the mountains.”
Anyway, I agree with your main point: “despite its appearance, “yamakawa” is probably 2 words.”
Thanks again!