Secrets, Swords, Singapore, … and Density?!: Part 1
Friday, March 21st, 2008
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In Part 3 of the unagi road trip series (a recent beginner’s lesson in the main part of JapanesePod101.com), the PDF contains this great sentence:
君の秘密を皆に話してしまったよ。
Kimi no himitsu o mina ni hanashite shimatta yo.
I have revealed your secret to everyone.
Another Way to Betray Someone’s Trust …
When would you ever say something like this? And with what tone? Perhaps you utter it in a state of complete disgrace, just before ending your life. You’ve got the sword in hand (since you’re a Japanophile and want an old-timey, Japanese method of suicide). You hang your head and quietly say, “Kimi no himitsu o mina ni hanashite shimatta yo,” then fall on the sword. (Your use of shimatta would express regret, but at that point, no one would be parsing the grammar.)
Or maybe you’d say this sentence just before walking out on someone: “Hey, guess what. I’ve taken all the money out of our account. I’ve taken your Metallica CDs. The cat’s coming with me. And oh, by the way, I’ve revealed your secret to everyone.” (In that case, shimatta would express the thorough way in which you’ve hurt and humiliated your ex. Again, no one would be analyzing grammar at that moment, but it’s always wise to know just what you’re expressing….)
Hours after I encountered this thought-provoking sentence, I learned the word 密度 (mitsudo: density, dense + degree). I was trying to tell my language exchange partner that, as I recently learned, Singapore has the world’s second highest population density of all independent countries. (It’s second after Monaco!) My partner taught me this word:
人口密度 (jinkōmitsudo: population density)
population (1st 2 chars.) + density (last 2 chars.)The first two kanji, 人口, break down as follows:
person + number of people (i.e., number of mouths to feed).
Then he gave me the wording for what I wanted to say:
シンガポールは世界で二番目に人口密度の高い国です。
Shingapōru wa sekai de nibanme ni jinkōmitsudo no takai kuni desu.
Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world.
Aha, I thought: 密 again! Why do the words for “density” and “secret” share a kanji? Here they are again:
密度 (mitsudo: density) dense + degree
秘密 (himitsu: secret) to keep secret + secret
Well, as it turns out, 密 (MITSU, hiso(ka)) has three fairly different meanings:
1) Close, dense, thick, compact, tight
2) Minuteness, carefulness
3) Secret, private, illegal, stealthy
I love how “secret” in the third definition quickly gives way to “illegal.” There’s human nature for you!
You might wonder, as I did, how this character evolved to contain such disparate meanings. You’ll find Henshall’s analysis of this at the next link.
And you may have noticed that 必 pops up in both sides of 秘密. Well, even if you didn’t notice, you can find out more about that at the next link.
We’ll explore the various meanings of 密 later. Now for today’s Verbal Logic Quiz!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
This week, the San Francisco Chronicle published my review of “Losing Kei,” a novel by Suzanne Kamata. It’s the story of a young American woman who moves to Japan and marries unhappily into a traditional Japanese family. I thought I’d share the link in case you’re planning to marry into such a family and want to know what lies ahead!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/19/DDAGUANIM.DTL
March 24th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Another great post! I also admit that I never related ’steal’ to ’stealthy’.
It’s always fun to read you article and it actually helps me a lot.
Let’s keep up the fire!
March 25th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Thanks for the nice comment, Jong! It’s always great to hear from you!
March 25th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Great post. It’s easy to see how the “altar” radical of 秘 could be miscopied into the rice plant radical. Not only do the radicals roughly resemble each other, but with a kanji that means “to hide”, it would be natural to think of hiding behind rice plants in a paddy. Perhaps you think that rice plants are too short, but that applies only to the dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties that the Green Revolution popularized (short plants are more productive and resistant to “lodging”, where great swaths of rice plants, laden down with their heavy rice seeds, fall over in unison, especially amidst heavy rain and wind). Prior to the use of these dwarf varieties, rice plants were considerably taller.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi, Bob1. Thanks for the comment. First, I have to say that I LOVE your gravatar!
Next, I must say that your discussion took me just a tad (!) outside any area of “expertise” that I might have. But that’s a great thing! I had no idea what the Green Revolution might be; the name suggests that that’s what we’re going through now, as people wake up to eco-issues. But no, of course that’s wrong. Wikipedia helped me see that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution.
I really like the image you gave of “logding.” It seems ripe for adaptation as a metaphor–something to do with hordes of people indulging in groupthink and “falling over in unison” when times get tough!
Anyway, I appreciate the education in rice! Japanophiles should certainly know a bit about rice! It’s also amazing to consider that you read a blog ostensibly about 密 and then immersed yourself in a meditation on rice! That just shows how there’s no telling where kanji or curiosity will take us!
March 27th, 2008 at 11:37 am
This is a brilliant blog! As useful as japanesepod101 itself!
March 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Wow, thanks!!! And what an honor to have this blog compared to the ever-inspiring JPod!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I was struggling to get hold of Japanese for past one year. Your blog is so wonderful and made me realize the magic of kanji. You are really great and your blog inspire me to study Japanese with interest.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Thanks so much, Aravind! I’m blown away by all the nice comments on this one blog! They certainly inspire me to keep going (not that I was thinking of stopping!) Thanks for giving me such a lift!
March 28th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hey there Eve thanks again for another great entry.
Just thought you would like to know that I followed up on a minor question you asked me - Why does your name have two n’s - Well the 秘密 is that there is no 秘密. Apparently when I asked my mom said she did it for aesthetic reasons.
There you go. I was hoping for something really interesting - perhaps I was named after: Glenn Miller or John Glenn.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Thanks for the nice comment, Glenn.
Well, maybe there IS some 秘密 that your mom isn’t telling you (or else it would cease to be a 秘密！）… Was some old flame named Glenn? Was the mailman (or postal worker or whatever they’re called Down Under) perhaps named Glenn?! (Just kidding. Completely kidding. Never know how far I can go w/ these comments. Am forever writing outlandish things and then remembering that I should be a responsible JPod representative or something like that!)
March 28th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Oops … meant to say that I then erase the aforementioned outlandish comments and substitute something a little more staid and appropriate.
Thought I’d add that, just in case you were wondering why you haven’t seen any outlandish comments!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am
When I first read the sentence that the rice plant radical of 秘 was originally 示 and changed through miscopying, I was wondering whether she was serious or joking in her typical way. Now I checked Dr. Shirakawa’s book and she is right. Also my kanji dictionary lists 秘 with the 示 radical along the regular 秘.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:45 am
I would NEVER joke about something as sacred as the miscopying of radicals!
Glad Shirakawa and Henshall agree. Who knows? Maybe Henshall used Shirakawa as a source.
Interesting to hear that about your kanji dictionary! If you hadn’t heard from Shirakawa and Henshall on the matter first, you might have been pretty confused to see 示 listed as a radical!