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Take a look at the following sentence to see if you recognize anything:

政府は過激派グループの活動を注意深く監視した。

Whenever I confront unknown kanji, I try to identify components and patterns. In this case, one thing jumps out at me—this sentence is soggy! Five of the 12 kanji contain the “water” radical, ! In both 過激派 and 注意深く, two out of three characters are sopping wet. Surely this sentence is about fishing, scuba diving, or water conservation. While you ponder the issue, I’ll block the translation with two watery pictures.

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It’s always exciting when a foreign language teaches you about your own, and that’s the case with the following word:

激賞 (gekishō: enthusiastic praise)     intense + praise

Sample Sentence with 激賞 …

I’ve long known 賞 (SHŌ) as “award” or “prize,” as in アカデミー賞, “Academy Award.” When I saw “praise” in the definition of 激賞, I was startled. It couldn’t really be a typo, I figured, because there’s no such thing as an enthusiastic prize (though there are plenty of prizes for enthusiasm). Then it hit me that “praise” and “prize” could be connected in Japanese—and perhaps in English, too!

Yes on both accounts! Well, to be perfectly accurate, the English link is looser. Both “praise” and “price” (not prize) relate back to the Latin pretium, meaning “price, value, worth, reward.” And then “prize” has been an alternate spelling of “price.” I never thought about the similarities among any of these words!
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We start with Alberto’s haiku calendar for March. It’s lovely, as always, but there’s one difference this time; he’s the one who wrote the haiku! お疲れさまでした! (Otsukaresamadeshita! Good job!)

See the comments section for his explanation of this haiku.

Now we’ll return from the ethereal haiku world and come back down to earth with a thud! In an ongoing investigation of 激 (GEKI, hage(shii): violent, intense, agitated, sudden), I’ve come across a sample sentence with the following translation:

When the flight crew has the aircraft under control, everything is working normally, and yet it still crashes into the ground, that’s CFIT.

Really? You call that CFIT? Not “all hell has broken loose for no good reason” but just “CFIT”? Sounds rather mild, I would say.
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If you had to draw “violent,” what images would you use? Maybe you’d think back to the board game Clue: Colonel Mustard committed the murder in the billiard room with a rope, whereas Mrs. Peacock used a lead pipe in the conservatory. Or maybe your mind would turn to machine guns, bombs, and other tools of warfare.

Here’s something you may not have considered: water. Water! It’s all around us, but I’ve long neglected to use it as a weapon! And yet, as I’ve learned from one kanji, water leads to violence. So much for washing away one’s sins!

I’ve overlooked not only the violence inherent in water but also the water () inherent in violence:

激 (GEKI, hage(shii): violent, intense, agitated, sudden)

If you’re picturing a glass of water, you might be puzzled about water’s aggressive nature. But consider these watery words:

激流 (gekiryū: raging stream; rapids)     violent + stream

激浪 (gekirō: raging sea)     violent + waves

The second kanji breaks down as water + good! Or “good and wet”! It has the kun-yomi of nami, but it’s not the second part of tsunami (津波: harbor + wave), as you might be thinking.

On 浪 …

So that’s the type of water we’re talking about here! Not the tame, faucet-fed kind but the sort that can demolish cliff walls and buildings (as is happening right now in my disaster-prone corner of the world).

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As you may know, 知恵 (chie: to know + wisdom) is “wisdom” or “intelligence.” And we’ve seen that 袋 (TAI, fukuro) can mean “bag.” Given that, what do you think the following represents?

知恵袋 (chiebukuro)     wisdom (1st 2 kanji) + bag

My cynical side takes over and imagines a wind bag who won’t shut up about everything he claims to know. Not at all. The first definition of “wisdom bag” is literally “bag full of wisdom,” and another meaning is “someone who devises a solution when others have no idea what to do”:

知恵袋 (chiebukuro: (1) bag full of wisdom; bag containing all the world’s wisdom; (2) person who is a fountain of wisdom; brains (of a company))     wisdom (1st 2 kanji) + bag

If it’s strange to imagine an experienced person as a bag, that’s probably no stranger than imagining a wise person as a fountain, as apparently we do in English!

The Japanese know how to put unusual things in bags:
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We start with Alberto’s haiku calendar for February, another beauty:

Wow, this haiku features some complex kanji! Alberto will tell us about the poem in the comments section. Meanwhile, here’s the scoop on the least familiar characters:

嶺 (RYŌ, REI, ne, mine: peak, summit)
且 (SHO, SHŌ, SO, ka(tsu): also, furthermore, moreover)
褐 (KATSU: brown)
蔽 (FUTSU, HEI, HETSU, ō(i), ō(u): to cover)

In this list, the first and last characters are non-Jōyō.

Let’s return to a kanji you’ve seen before. As you know from last week, 袋 (TAI, DAI, fukuro) often means “bag, pouch.” With that in mind, try to figure out what the following might represent: Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I’ve shown you koala and kangaroo pictures, and in the past I’ve posted pictures of dogs, giraffes, and yaks. By this point, you should be an expert in animal identification. Based on the breakdowns below, see if you can figure out which animal each compound represents:

袋熊 (fukuro-guma)     pouch + bear
袋狼 (fukuro-ōkami)     pouch + wolf
袋鼠 (fukuro-nezumi)     pouch + mouse

Words for Discussing Pouched Animals …

To block the answers, I’ll present the vitals on the kanji of the moment:

袋 (TAI, DAI, fukuro: (1) bag; sack, pouch; (2) skin of an orange (and other like fruits); (3) dead end; (4) plot of land surrounded by water)

The Etymology of 袋 …

So many meanings!

By the way, the first on-yomi of 袋 is easy to remember, because we so often tie (タイ) bags!

Once again, here’s the koala sign that has prompted this examination of 袋. You can also revisit the breakdown of the words in the sign.

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What do you think the following word means?

虚誕 (kyotan)

The first kanji, 虚 (KYO, KO, muna(shii)), means “empty” or “false,” as we saw long ago. You may recognize 誕 from 誕生日 (tanjōbi: birthday, to be born + to be born + day), where 誕 means “to be born, birth.” So 虚誕 is a false birth?! No, 誕 has other meanings, and the pertinent one in 虚誕 relates to the original definition of 誕.

In 誕, the radical is 言 (words). That’s not entirely obvious, because every component in 誕 can serve as a radical!

All Can Be Radicals …

Meanwhile, 延 is “to stretch, extend,” also acting phonetically in 誕 to express “big.” With “big, stretched words,” you have bragging or exaggerations. Thus, 誕 originally meant “deception” or “false.”

That’s the meaning in our star word, as the breakdown indicates:

虚誕 (kyotan: exaggerated talk)     false + false

More False Talk …

That’s not the whole etymological story, though. The word 降誕 (kōtan: holy birth, royal birth, to descend (from heaven) + birth) originally meant “making a fuss about a holy (or royal) birth.” That makes sense, given the exaggerations inherent in 誕 back then. Consequently, “birth” became an extended meaning of 誕, which we can define in an assortment of ways:

誕 (TAN: to be born, nativity, false, to be arbitrary)

“To be born” is now the main meaning, as in 誕生日 and its root: Read the rest of this entry »

When you long for something or someone, do you think of that longing as having a particular location? Do you store it somewhere, such as your heart, mind, soul, or journal? I don’t feel as if my yearnings have specific addresses; they seem all-pervasive. But the following word hints at the idea that desire is actually lodged (宿) somewhere!

宿望 (shukubō: long-cherished desire)     to lodge + desire

This may have something to do with the nuances of 宿 (SHUKU, yado: to lodge), which also appears in two words synonymous with 宿望:

宿志 (shukushi: longstanding desire)     to lodge + purpose

We’ve seen 志 in both 意志 (ishi: will, intention, determination, intention + to intend) and 志望 (shibō: wish, desire, ambition, ambition + to aspire). Working with Halpern’s definitions, I’ve defined this kanji a little differently all three times!

宿願 (shukugan: longstanding desire)     to lodge + desire

You may recognize 願 as the central part of お願い (onegai: wish). GAN is an on-yomi of 願, and we see this yomi again here:

願望 (ganbō: wish, desire)     desire + wish

Aha! We’ve come full circle, returning to 望!

If you also want to return to the idea that wishes can be stored somewhere inside a person, check out this word: Read the rest of this entry »

明けましておめでとうございます!（Akemashite omedetō gozaimasu! Happy New Year!). We’ve seen that this 明け means “to open, begin.” What I hadn’t seen until last week was this version of the greeting:

謹賀新年 (Kingashinnen: Happy New Year)
     respectfully + to congratulate + new + year

On 謹賀 …

A Japanese friend posted this on my Facebook page. Although I guessed the meaning, I was puzzled both by the yomi and by the fact that I’d never heard this expression. That’s because it’s formal and is used only in writing.

Whereas the 明けまして phrase sounds completely Japanese, 謹賀新年 consists of four on-yomi, so it seems more Chinese. However, I will forever associate it with Australia, because that’s where I was last week when I received the greeting. About an hour later, while admiring koalas at a koala conservation site, I realized that the tourists next to me were Japanese. After they’d gazed at the nearest koala and said “Kawai!” several times, I showed them the message on my cell phone and asked for the yomi.

Japanese Highlights of the Trip …

More Koalas! …

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