Tangy Wisteria !

Once upon a time Wisteria was tang or thang!

The Japanese have a word KOKUN to describe characters that have a meaning in ordinary Japanese that differs greatly from the original Chinese meaning or the SinoJapanese usage. 

Show a Chinese this character and they'll think of vines and canes but show a Japanese and they'll think FUJI the wisteria plant which is a vine though if they're very good at Kanji they may be remember seeing the other extended meaning in a dictionary?

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Other Dragons ONE JIAO

There are other signs apart from Lung used to write about dragons in chinese and other asian languages.

Abbreviations used in this blog Whats SJ mean

Here's a list of some symbols and abbreviatiosn I use in this blog.

You will also see them used elsewhere.

SJ + Sino Japanese the ON reading which I usually give in Upper with the KUN reading in Lower case or following.

SK is SinoKorean SV is SinoVietnamese. Loan words from Chinese into those two languages.
Sometimes Vietnamese also has an other equivalent Austroasiatic word which I give as well.

R = Radical

* is the other kind of radical the form scholars believe is the earlier or oldest form of a word.

I often give them to see how the diversity of forms in dialects and loans into other NON Sinitic languages derive from older forms. You may have noticed in Vietnamese for example that there are SV forms closer to MIN or Cantonese or that Cantonese like the older forms of Chinese has final consonants?

Sa and soughing

#unihan #hanzi #chinese #kanji 

There is a rather archaic verb nowadays rarely used even in poetry that refers to the sound of branches moving in the wind sough and yes the gh is silent. The original Old English form was probably swoogan.
Chinese has a verb SA which can translate this verb and also the word rustle.

Soughing is a sound hard to describe. Unlike rustling its more the sound of branches and the whole tree or a group of trees moving in a strong wind whereas rustling can occur in a breeze. You have to hear it to understand it. It's what of those .. ah that's what the writers meant moments if you get to have it!


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TSUJI Crossroads

Here's another example of KOKUJI. The Japanese reduced three characters to one.

They do also however have a SinoJapanese term with 3 characters you'll see in some dictionaries that is a direct translation of the Chinese cross - character - road phrase.

SJ is SinoJapanese abbreviated.

Oroshii the wind from the mountains

#oroshii #unihan #kanji #japanese 

I have seen one reference site that claims this character has been borrowed for use in writing Cantonese dialect with Hanzi. Oroshii like the other kokuji a group of about 30 - 40 characters seems otherwise to be unique to Japan. There is a related verb form written with a different kanji.


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Chiyo on Coolness and Liang the Hanzi

LIANG COOL  After the hot weather yesterday it's cool again in Sydney.

It looks rather like the weather will be switiching back and forth between cool an drainy and hot steamy for the next week?

Here's some haiku by Chiyo on coolness

Tsuki suzushi / ano ha kono ha ni / tada okazu

The moon is cool on this leaf and the other not only one.

Suzuhisa ya / yo fukaki hashi ni / shiranu dooshi

The coolness in the deep night strangers gather on the bridge.

Shimizu suzushi / hotaru no kiete / nani mo nashi

Clear cool water fireflies vanish nothing else.

Enjoy!

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Cloudy Yun

You can write Yun without using the Rain symbol! (Unihan 96f2). Though a spiral in seal form it's simply a cocoon plus a top stroke of the horizontal line that's one of the six basic strokes though the cursive forms revert back closer to the spiral of the older forms.
It's probably only an accident that Japanese Kumo seems similar to Latin Cumulus.

The * symbol by the way marks what linguists think was the oldest Sinitic form of Modern Yun.
Another possible reconstruction could be hwiang or huan or even hiwan.

But I'm guessing. Not having access to time travel we can only argue for the form that has the highest probablityof being closest to the most ancient forms of Chinese and whatever langauge.