Reinventing the Wheel: Part 3
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
| Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary |
Sometimes it’s wonderful to find that the Japanese (or the Chinese before them) have coined a word for concepts that don’t exist in English. But occasionally I have the opposite feeling, as with this compound:
脱輪 (datsurin: wheel going off the road, usually into a ditch; wheel flying off its axle) to take off + wheel
Why did they need to coin a word for these disasters? How often do they happen in Japan?!
Last week we investigated the way 輪 (RIN, wa) can mean “ring, circle, loop.” Now we’ll look at its other meanings, starting with “wheel.”
Wheel Power
At the link, you’ll find sentences in which 輪 means “wheel.”
Free-Wheeling Sentences with 輪 …
Here’s my favorite sentence of that type:
一輪車は車輪がーつしかありません。
Ichirinsha wa sharin ga hitotsu shika arimasen.
A unicycle has only one wheel.
This sentence seems to contain its own inverse! If you take just 輪車は車輪, you find a palindrome! And if you remove hiragana from the sentence, you can find an even longer palindrome: 一輪車車輪ー. How cool is that?!
But … back to reality. The first compound is actually 一輪車 (ichirinsha), rather than 輪車. The word 一輪車 can mean either “unicycle” or “wheelbarrow”! I wonder what kind of confusion that causes. There’s a big difference between a unicycle race and a wheelbarrow race!
If that flusters you, here’s a nice bit of logic:
輪止め (wadome: brakes; wheel stops, wedges, blocks, parking curbs) wheel + to stop
You can’t ask for much more clarity of thought. Brakes stop wheels!
But here’s a curious lapse in logic:
輪 (rin: counter for wheels and flowers)
Wheels and flowers?! I understand that a spoked wheel can resemble, say, a daisy. But the sense of scale, the function, and the origins of wheels and flowers are so different that the conflation boggles the mind.
Can this overlap lead to misunderstandings? Maybe not. There’s hardly an instance when context wouldn’t help you distinguish a wheel from a flower. But let me confirm that assertion by testing it in English:
“I brought you a bouquet of wheels.” No.
“I was born in the 1960s to a bunch of wheel children.” No.
“Where have all the wheels gone?” Pff.
“Please don’t pick the wheels.” Nope.
“You need four flowers for balance.” Nah.
“Let’s not reinvent the flower.” Well, OK, maybe that could fly.
How about “flower power” versus “wheel power”? The latter seems viable only because “wheel power” sounds so similar to “willpower.”
In Japanese, however, this odd conflation of meanings can lend ambiguity to words. Take the following:
大輪 (tairin: large wheel; large flower) big + wheel, flower
And in two words where 輪 serves as a counter, the same murkiness appears:
一輪 (ichirin: one wheel; one flower) one + wheel, flower
二輪 (nirin: two wheels; two flowers) two + wheels, flowers
For more fun with numbers and 輪, check the link.
輪 as “Periphery” or “Outline”
An extended meaning of 輪 is “periphery” or “outline,” as in these words:
外輪山 (gairinzan: outer rim of a crater)
outside + periphery + mountainIn concocting this compound, they forgot to mention the fire inside the mountain—that is, the 火 inside 火山 (kazan: volcano, fire + mountain). That has to be one of my favorite compounds!
輪郭 (rinkaku: contours, outlines; features) outline + enclosure
This breakdown reminds me of the previous discussion about boundaries that serve as enclosures.
Bonus Meaning
There’s yet another meaning of 輪, and it involves idiomatic usage:
輪をかける (wa o kakeru: to be even more (so))
Is that enough meanings? Hope this has all been meaningful! Time for your Verbal Logic Quiz!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
August 30th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Want to win a book about kanji?
As you may know, I’ve written a forthcoming book about kanji. Crazy for Kanji: A Student’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters is due out from Stone Bridge Press this fall.
The publisher needs you to supply the finishing touches! He wants to illustrate the book with photos of kanji in daily use in Japan (or in Japantowns in other countries).
The kanji could be in the names of stores, in other kinds of signs, in menus, on book covers, or whatever strikes your fancy.
If the publisher selects your photo, he’ll send you a free copy of Crazy for Kanji!
Here are the rules for participating:
* Send as many photos as you like to Peter Goodman at sbpedit@stonebridge.com.
* The deadline is September 05, 2008.
* Send a tif or jpeg file.
* It should be 300 dpi and up to 4 inches wide.
* The photo can be black and white or color. The publisher has Photoshop and will convert photos to black and white as needed.
* It’s best if you create a file name that includes your last name, as opposed to calling the file “photo.jpg” or something similarly vague.
* Be sure to give your name as you would want it to appear in the photo credit. Or if you want to be anonymous, please indicate that, too.
* It would help if you wrote a caption or indicated in some perfunctory way what the image is of. But that’s not mandatory!
* You must have permission to give the publisher the image. It can’t belong to someone else and be submitted without that owner’s permission.
* The publisher will be the one to decide which photos he’ll be using. (No use sweet-talking Eve!)
* Stone Bridge Press retains nonexclusive rights covering all usage, media, etc.
Thank you for participating! Here’s hoping you win!
P.S. JPod was kind enough to run this announcement in a newsletter last week, and some JPod readers responded with wonderful photos. But the publisher hasn’t received enough. So please keep them coming! The deadline is coming up soon!