Reaping the Fruits of One’s Labor: Part 6
Friday, March 14th, 2008
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For kanji lovers, the word 果実 (kajitsu: fruit, fruit + fruit) is so ripe with possibilities that it’s ready to explode. As we saw last week, 果 and 実 each mean “fruit,” both literally and metaphorically. We investigated the juicy, literal sense last time. Now we’ll see how these terms can refer abstractly to the fruits of one’s labor—the rewards for hard work. Let’s take these kanji one at a time.
The Rewards of 実
The following word captures both the literal and metaphorical aspects of 実:
実入り (miiri: (1) crop, harvest; ripeness; (2) earnings, profits, gains) fruit + to enter
The breakdown brings to mind James and the Giant Peach. But with 実入り, no one is entering a huge piece of fruit! Rather, fruit seeds enter the ground. And later, the earnings from the crop enter the bank account! (It’s “seed money,” you might say, only it comes after the financial venture, not before.)
As you know from this word and others, 実 can have the yomi of mi. A close cousin is the yomi mino(ru):
実る (minoru: to bear fruit, to ripen)
This term can refer to either dripping-good fruit or the fruits of one’s efforts.
Here’s a related noun:
実り (minori: ripening (of a crop); crop, harvest)
This literal word gives rise to a phrase involving metaphorical fruitfulness:
実り多い (minori ōi: fruitful, successful) ripening + many
Minori resembles “minority.” As a mnemonic, you could associate 実り多い with “many successful minorities.”
The Rewards of 果
Whereas 果実 (kajitsu) and 実る (minoru) can refer to a tangible kind of fruit, the following word refers solely to metaphorical fruits:
成果 (seika: results, fruits) to attain + fruit
The character 果 (fruit, result, outcome, effect) shows up in a host of useful words, especially its two kun-yomi forms:
果たす (hatasu: to accomplish; fulfill; carry out; achieve)
This verb is transitive.
果てる (hateru: to end; be finished; be exhausted; die)
This verb is intransitive.
And then, with the on-yomi of KA, 果 means “fruit, result, outcome, effect” and appears in words about effects. Have a look:
因果 (inga: cause and effect; karma; fate) cause + effect
It might have been cool if there hadn’t been voicing here. Then the yomi would have been Inka, and one could have pondered the karma of Incans (or people who drink Inka Kola, which comes from Peru). As it is, we can only wonder about the fate of women named Inga.
効果 (kōka: effect; effectiveness) effect + effect
If you add one kanji in front, you produce its antonym:
逆効果 (gyakukōka: backfiring; opposite effect)
opposite + effect + effect
Tying the Knot
If you’ve concluded that 果 and 実 are two peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin, soulmates for life, and so on, you’re in for a surprise. Both of today’s lead characters like to mate not only with each other (in 果実) but also with 結.
As you probably know, 結 (KETSU, musu(bu)) means “to tie, unite, bind, connect” and is the initial kanji in 結婚 (kekkon: marriage, to unite + to marry). Fittingly, 結 ties the knot in today’s discussion, serving as further common ground on which 果 and 実 can meet. (Or should I say that it breaks up their happy marriage? I guess it depends on your view of threesomes….)
At any rate, here’s how 果 and 実 pair off with 結:
結果 (kekka: result; consequence) to connect + result, outcome
結実 (ketsujitsu: fruitification (bearing fruit); achieving success; realization) to connect + reality
Ketsujitsu means “fruitification”! I love it! This word is specific to botany and doesn’t even appear in my English-English dictionary. Nevertheless, I’m tempted to use it metaphorically: “How’s the fruitification of your kanji study?” You can assess that fruitification with the Verbal Logic Quiz.
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
March 17th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Well Eve, the fruitification of my kanji study needs to be researched a bit more by the scientists around me… sorry I mean my Japanese friends.
The James Dean reference sent me to my DVD collection (ones that I picked up in Japan a while back) and I checked out the title - 理由なき反抗. My Japanese must be bearing some fruit for I was able to read nearly all that until the last character - which I have subsequently learned is read ‘kou’ so Riyuu naki hankou’ - which translated means ’cause+none+opposition/rebel/hostility’ I sort of was hoping it would be a bit more interesting like one of my favorite films ‘Glengarry Glenross’ which is 摩天楼を夢みて in Japanese. Translation - Dreaming of Skyscrapers.
How did I get to here it must be the 効果 of your Blog Eve
March 17th, 2008 at 6:26 am
By the way I am aware that one of my favorite movies has my name in it twice (without the superfluous ‘n’ OR is it that the movie should be ‘Glenngarry Glennross̵
- that is my just my vanity and huge ego at play
March 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Glenn!!! Nice to hear from you again! Thanks for dropping by.
I noticed some posts of yours on the other side of the “wall” (as the separation between this blog space and the rest of JPod feels like a wall, perhaps of the Berlin variety!). And I was particularly pleased to see your use of 逆 in 逆ナンパ. By the time you got to 反逆者 and 逆効果 over here in “East Germany,” you were already a pro at that kanji.
I’m happy that you’re fruitifying so well! A Japanese friend pointed out to me that we have nice words like “fruition” (in which I had never noticed the FRUIT root!), so why was I messing about with “fruitification”? But … how can I not?! Glad you seemed to enjoy the word, too.
So “Rebel Without a Cause” in Japanese has no 逆?! Hmph. What a let-down!
And 摩天楼 is skyscraper! I didn’t know that! Scrape + sky + tall building. Perfect!
OK, I’ve just read all about “Glengarry Glen Ross,” since I never saw it. Sounds really good. I *think* I read the play eons ago in a drama course, but obviously nothing stuck … except a stubborn case of Mamet-phobia, in which Mamet’s plays make me feel completely left out and therefore stupid (things I’m not eager to experience, which leads to me avoid his plays at all costs). Anyway, maybe I’ll have to give GGR another try, esp. since it’s your namesake, almost!
Finally, why DO you have an extra N? I always wonder about parents who give their kids a common name but then stick in one extra letter or do something else unusual to the spelling, so that the kids are forever exasperated while correcting people’s spellings of their name! In my kanji classes, there was a guy named Grehg, and I felt that he must have had a terrible time with that. Then again, you’d be amazed how many people can’t handle spelling “Eve.”
March 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Eve, do you mean you wrote this blog taking it for granted that the James Dean film had “反逆者” in its Japanese title? Unfortunately no. If the Japanese title is translated back to English, it is “Rebellion Without a Cause(理由なき反抗)”. Pretty close. Compared to many other films, though, this one has a fairly literal translation, and so is East of Eden (エデンの東).
March 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
IMHO, I think you should drop the romaji in the pronunciation sections of definitions. Anyone that can follow these lessons will probably know kanna, and it is a lot more obvious why some sounds change when characters are put together (for instance つ turning into small っ).
Food for thought. I hope I see my comment bear some fruits.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Thanks very much for the input. You make a very valid point, and I’ve given your comment a lot of thought.
I’m actually surprised I haven’t heard this complaint before, as I was anticipating it ages ago. I thought people might gripe that my emphasis on romaji detracted from the immersion experience that they were hoping for (although, of course, the fact that my blogs are 95% in English detracts quite a bit more from the immersion experience than any romaji ever could!). I know that something good happens to my brain when I read kana definitions in Breen’s dictionary, rather than the romaji ones in Spahn.
I didn’t, however, expect the exact reason you gave (about つ vs. っ). I agree that hiragana does make it a little clearer why, for instance, KETSU + KA becomes kekka. I mean, when you see that written in kana, you can see that the TSU still exists but has just shrunk a bit!
In other cases, I think hiragana actually makes things LESS clear for learners. For instance, in the blog that went up today, I’ve referred to 子馬 (kouma: colt). After seeing the kana in Breen (こうま), I wrote kōma, which was a stupid mistake, because the U of kouma clearly comes from “uma,” horse. My Japanese proofreader caught the error, fortunately. Because we’re used to seeing so many romaji conventions, even “kouma” might lead people to pronounce the word with a long O, so I probably should have written ko-uma, for absolute clarity (only that looks awfully strange!).
My goal has always been to make people fall in love with kanji, even if they don’t know the first thing about Japanese. I even hope that falling in love with kanji will make them want to start studying Japanese. That may be terribly idealistic to the point of naivete. The reality is, most likely, that the vast majority of people reading this blog on JPod DO know some Japanese and are pretty hardcore about learning. But it’s not true of all the readers (e.g., my husband and friends!).
Ultimately, I don’t want there to be any barrier to entry or barrier to understanding. I want people to be able to start enjoying kanji from Day 1 (do I sound like Hillary Clinton?!) of Japanese study, rather than feeling that they must first learn hiragana, then katakana, which can take a while. I also believe that even those who can read and write kana proficiently will still find it ever so slightly slower to read than romaji. And I don’t want people to be struggling with two things at once. Rather, when there’s something as challenging and intimidating as kanji, I want to isolate the “problem” and shine a spotlight on the kanji alone.
But … your comment makes me wonder whether others have a similar wish. I could open the matter up to discussion and see if there’s widespread, passionate opposition to the way I’ve been doing it thus far! It would actually save me a bit of work to use kana in the definitions….
For the time being, though, I’ll stay the course. Sorry for the lack of instant fruitification!
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Points taken. Incidentally, I discovered a similar fruit/metaphoric fruits kanji today: 熟. Can help but wonder if 塾 school is drawn out from that fruiting concept too.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Wow, 熟 is a really interesting character. If you double it, you get 熟々 (completely, really, thoroughly), and in this case, I WILL use the kana to provide the yomi, because I like seeing the repetition: つくづく and つくつく!
I’m not sure where tsuku comes from. Spahn has u(reru), “to ripen, to come to maturity” and “u(mu): to ripen, be overripe” as the 2 kun-yomi for 熟.
And as I’m sure you know (but as I only just discovered), this character shares an on-yomi of JUKU with 塾, the other kanji you mention. (In fact, I wonder if you found 熟 by typing JUKU and having the computer supply 熟 instead of 塾… Am I right?! That’s how I stumble onto lots of interesting kanji!)
Your etymological theory makes SO much sense! I really like that idea, especially because 熟 shows up in compounds like 熟練 (jukuren: practiced skill, mastery), 熟視 (jukushi: to stare at, to study), 熟読 (jukudoku: to read thoroughly, carefully), and 習熟 (shūjuku: mastery), all of which would seem related to the cram school concept associated with 塾.
And … aha … I can’t believe I didn’t realize this before: 熟語 (jukugo) is the kanji for “compound.” I knew this 1st kanji looked familiar!!!!
Anyway, unfortunately, Henshall has different ideas about the etymology of the 2 JUKUs in question:
熟 evolved from a different shape that meant “to cook by boiling.” The fire radical (on the bottom) was added later for clarity.
Meanwhile, the top of 塾 originally had to do with a person building castle walls. They did so with earth，土, which appears on the bottom. So 塾 referred to a walled settlement, which later meant walled compound (ah, a different sort of compound!), and then developed the association of “school,” finally evolving into “cram school.” Whew!