SHU and Nezumi - A story of small animals

#yearoftherat #nezumi #radical208 # kanji #hanzi 

SHU and Nezumi - A story of small animals 

Radical 208 translated as Rat or Mouse is also used to refer to several other species of rodents and insectivores too hence my use of the rainbow filter to reflect this diversity.

This may tell us something about cultural change in ancient China when writing systems were first developed and also that despite legends that Hanzi have changed over the centuries.

Just as some words written with radical 153 also appear written with the dog radical so likewise some animals with names written using SHU also appear with dog used instead.

There are 2 main reasons I can think of for this

Firstly the Dog radical has LESS Strokes - easier to memorize and write

Secondly a change of attitudes towards animals.
With growing urbanization small mammals that might compete with farmers seen as a group of pests.

Squirrels have a Chinese name meaning pine rat songshu

Voles are field rats tianshu

Shrews which are insect are qu with shu as the radical for their character.

Diao (pine) martens have dual forms

Weasels lingyou or qingyou called itachi in Japanese retain their own kanji

Oddly Moles have a hanzi of their own but in SinoJapanese the word is written with 2 kanji.

What do all these have in common apart form being small mammals?

They would mostly be seen as plant eating nuisances or food or fur sources by early farmers.

Squirrel fur can be used for brushes and winter hats.

Voles water or field do look like rats or mice if you only spot them briefly.

Pine martens are small predators also used for fur.

Weasels will try to raid poultry pens.

Moles digging runs can disrupt the planting and plowing of wheat and cereal crops and gardens.

However my first suggestion is probably the most likely though bearing in mind that Chinese has a semantic classifier system classifying animals as large predators dog and dog like, big cat/ tiger, medium size predators, badgers leopards etc, a third category for other small mammals makes sense?

If you have only seen these names listed under the dog radical do check out the entries under radical 208 in various web and print dictionaries.