Rings and Things: Part 1
Friday, August 15th, 2008
| Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary |
Well, a promise is a promise. I told you that no matter how much 環 intimidated me, especially in the context of 環境 (kankyō: environment, situation), I would eventually return to this wild beast of a kanji and tame it.
Fortunately, 環 is not a bad-looking character. Let’s have a better look:
環
The radical, 王, is symmetrical, if slightly cramped and warped now that it’s been pushed off to the left. On the right-hand side, the top part makes a strong geometric statement, like a row of small windows. The 一 … well, who can find anything wrong with a horizontal line? And as for the bottom part, the only thing that bothers me is a tiny stroke that throws off the balance. If not for that one stroke, this component would be symmetrical, and the whole character would have nothing but local symmetries. But I’ll just think of that stroke as a freckle or a birthmark—something I should be able to overlook.
Henshall, of course, approaches these components with an eye to meaning, rather than beauty.
Henshall on the Etymology of 環 …
You’re Surrounded!
When we first saw 環境, I said the breakdown was to surround + situation. As an astute reader has since noted, Yahoo’s dictionary breaks down this compound as to surround + region with a clear boundary. Anyway, 環 can have two meanings:
1. ring, circle, loop
2. to surround, encircle; around
As “surround,” 環 doesn’t seem to involve itself in terribly interesting words. The only two I could find were these:
環海 (kankai: surrounding seas) to surround + seas
衆人環視 (shūjin kanji: the presence of the whole company; with all eyes fixed on (one)) masses + people + to surround + to inspectThis is actually a union of two autonomous words. The first compound, 衆人 (shūjin) means “the people, the public.” The second compound, 環視 (kanshi) means “looking around.”
Wow, these words make me feel surrounded and watched!
Let’s abandon the second meaning then and focus on the original one, “ring, circle, loop.” That’s where all the action is.
Ring, Circle, Loop
Here’s a great compound that jumps off the page in its elegance and cleverness:
花環 (hanawa: wreath, garland) flower + circle
Who could ask for more?
Ah, but there is more, thanks to this useful word:
循環 (junkan: circulation, rotation, cycle) sequential + circle
The compound 循環 often has to do with blood.
But 循環 turns into something not at all bloody in these terms:
循環論法 (junkan ronpō: circular argument)
sequential + circle + argument + method
悪循環 (akujunkan: vicious cycle, vicious spiral)
bad + sequential + circle
It’s hard to see circularity in this next word, unless you think of interlinked circles as forming a chain:
一環 (ikkan: link (e.g. a part of a larger plan)) one + circle
It’s also hard to imagine the usage, but the sample sentence makes it clear.
And here’s the crowning 環 word for the day:
光環 (kōkan: corona) light + ring
A corona is a luminous ring around the sun or moon. A very cool compound!
Time for your Verbal Logic Quiz. Enjoy!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
August 26th, 2008 at 10:04 am
“As these celestial bodies disappear during eclipses, it looks as if they’re being eaten!” OK, but who is eating the celestial body at the time of a solar or lunar eclipse?
In 日食 and 月食, the second kanji used to be 蝕 instead of 食. Yes, it is a bug (right-side radical) that is eating them. I like the older kanji but unfortunately you hardly see it any more.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Aaah, the shape modification when a kanji serves as a radical… It’s great that you brought that up. I was under the impression that the radical 王 always means king for a long time (who wouldn’t?), and that resulted in Mnemonics that aren’t as easy as they should be.
It’s the same for 手 (hand) in 投げる (to throw), 足 (foot, leg) in 路 (road), 人 (person) in 借りる (to borrow), 肉 (meat) in 肺 (lung) etc. The Mnemonics would be much much easier if only I had known the true meaning.
On the past, I regarded the left radical of these kanji as:
投: hockey player (well, I just had to imagine something)
路: to stop (止) eating (口), fasting, etc.
借: spear (come on, who wouldn’t?)
肺: well, naturally…. moon! (月)
The mnemonics were challenging to make (but probably the result is amusing)… 抱 (hug) = a hockey player wrapping its hands around another hockey player (e.g., hugging) when the team wins… ugh… “”hand (手) wrapping (包) would be so much more simpler
This was the page that enlightened me: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical (it took me years to find it by accident!)
Btw Eve, did you have a book/reference from early on so that you knew the real meaning of those shapes from the start?
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am
Hi, Agro. Nice to hear from you again! And good job on figuring out the HTML for putting a link in a comment! New info. for me!
Your question about whether I had a book/reference from the start stirred up a lot of interesting thoughts, as does the idea that not everyone has such a reference when they start studying kanji. We all start in such different circumstances, with different tools and information at hand, and I forget that. I guess I took for granted that people somehow know what the radical of a kanji represents. That seems like essential info. But how WOULD they, unless they had a few specialized books? Kanji teachers might impart this info., but in my experience, they spend little to no time on that aspect of a kanji, and their info. might not be very specialized or even accurate.
My very first kanji book (aside from my textbook, Japanese for Busy People, 2) was Kanji Pict-o-Graphix (Aha!), and although I suppose it doesn’t say which component is the radical in a particular character, at least the book gives the meanings of all the components.
But … not very far into my kanji career, I developed a confusing mixture of factual and fictional mnemonics, and I often embarrassed myself in kanji class by saying confidently, “Oh, that component means ‘flag,’” only later remembering that I had made up that memory trick.
That kind of confusion can happen easily if one uses Heisig’s book and system, because he relies heavily on invented associations.
Any sources I have (and I now have several) pale in comparison to Henshall, who details the precise meaning and etymology of a radical and other components in each kanji. He’s very scholarly about it; he’s not out to help people with a simple memory trick, so he won’t just lump all the hand radicals together as “hand,” as other resource books might. For instance, with 抱 (kaka(eru), ida(ku): to hug), he says that the radical means “arm(s),” while (as you said), 包 means “to wrap, to envelop.” His info. makes it even easier to remember 抱 (which I happen to be seeing for the first time!).
Thanks for raising such a stimulating point!
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
Forgot to say: I was really impressed by your drawing of a hockey player, not to mention the computer skills that enabled you to show the hand radical on top of the sketch! Picasso meets Bill Gates!
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Hello again,
I’m glad that you found the link technique useful :). Only a few HTML tags works on WordPress’ comment system so it’s basically try and see. I’ve tried some on other WP blogs only to be disappointed that it doesn’t work. (but hey, this site has a preview button!)
Those private mnemonics can indeed later be embarrassing, especially when you’re pretty sure that it’s just some random meaningless shape so you can just innocently attach any meaning to it :). But this whole topic reminded me again about the beauty of learning: we can start with some imperfect or even outright broken understanding but it will eventually be refined if we continue our study.
Thanks for the Kanji Pict-o-Graphix link. The images there are very thought-provoking and interesting! And Henshall, which you brought up so many times, seems to be a book I need to hunt as someone studying kanji.
Lastly, I loved drawing and even dreamed of becoming a 漫画家 when I was a kid, poisoned by reading lots of mangas like Doraemon and Dragon Ball (mangas are widely popular here in Indonesia since God knows when). Any drawing skills I have (or more appropriately a lack of) is from that period.
Just to add one more off topic thing about kanji, since I brought Doraemon. In one story (Indonesian translation of course), through Doraemon’s device a grade-1 Nobita could write his name “NOBITA”. His friends didn’t believe it and confirmed to an adult that what is written is really “NOBITA”. His friends were really impressed: “Wow, you can really write your name!!!”.
At that time, I was like “What’s the big deal if a grade 1 student can write the letters N-O-B-I-T-A??? Everyone here can do it!!!”. Of course the Indonesian translation didn’t make sense. Now I know that Nobita must have actually wrote his name not in roman alphabets, not even in ひらがな, but using the almighty 漢字 which is considered a feat for a first-year student.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 am
It occurs to me that other people might like to know how to hyperlink their comment text. I’ve tried pasting Agro’s coding here, but all I end up with is hyperlinked text!
Agro, is there some way to share the coding and actually have it show up as coding?!
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
OK, for those interested in hyperlinking, here’s what you need to write:
<a href="http://www.jisho.org">A dictionary!!!</a>
Just replace the web address and the text with your own…
Which will become:
A dictionary!!!
—-
Btw Eve, tricking wordpress to actually show the code requires the usage of a little trick called “HTML escape sequence” :). You need to write < to get a literal < and > for >. “lt” is for “less than” btw.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Wow, HTML coding can be as complicated as kanji! Thanks so much for the tips!
September 6th, 2008 at 2:15 am
A very profound dialogue! I think that one needs both personal mnemonic tricks and a systematic study to learn kanji. Language is complicated and no simple rule explains everything. Nor does a single learning method work. And I think Agro agrees with me when he says “we can start with some imperfect or even outright broken understanding but it will eventually be refined if we continue our study”.
I am a native Japanese speaker but very often forget that, when a kanji is used as a radical, it undergoes an appreciable change in shape: a change isn’t always horizontal shrinkage but transformation to another kanji as 肉 changes to 月. Forgetting what I learned in elementary school, I start wondering, for instance, why most of the kanji relating to human body parts have the “moon” on the left side.
Personal mnemonics can lead you to embarrassment once in a while, unless you keep it to yourself. Before I started learning English and the alphabet at 12, I had had bits of rudiments of electricity. I had a very hard time remembering that W and V were not read as “watt” and “volt”, respectively.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Glad you mentioned that comment of Agro’s, because I think it’s a very wise, insightful outlook.
You know, I don’t think I ever heard that 肉 morphed into the radical 月, though I certainly knew that was the “flesh” radical. I’m so glad to have this info. And of course in hindsight, it seems like something obvious that I should have guessed before!
As a native speaker of English, it’s nearly impossible for me to imagine knowing about volts and watts before knowing the ABCs. But it’s great to hear this other perspective.