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There are so-called phono-semantic compound characters [1] which consist of two other characters, a part indicating its meaning, and one part indicating its rea
by looki 11y ago
There are so-called phono-semantic compound characters [1] which consist of two other characters, a part indicating its meaning, and one part indicating its reading. This has helped me tremendously while memorizing the readings of Japanese kanji - and guessing the readings of unknown characters does work incredibly well after you have learned the most common ones which are used as components in more complex characters.
As a very simple example, 仲 is a combination of 人 (person) and the reading of 中 and means relation, relationship (which is vaguely indicated by the human character).
You are correct, though: This is not failsafe and characters can have multiple readings or lack this phono-semantic notion altogether (also, since the characters are originally Chinese it doesn't work as well in Japanese, I believe), but I think it is the closest thing to guessing a word's pronunciation that these languages offer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...
- ggreer 11y agoYou're right that some aspects of logographic languages can hint at meaning and pronunciation, but those are still just hints. The only way to be sure is to memorize. Take your example of 仲. How is that pronounced? In Japanese, 人 is typically pronounced "jin", "nin", or "hito" depending on context. 中 is usually pronounced "chuu" or "naka." How do I know these things? Rote memorization. While I can recognize that 仲 contains 人 and 中, that doesn't tell me how to say 仲. The only reason I know its pronunciation is because I memorized it. (In this case, it happens to be the same as 中.) And that's just for reading. Writing is worse. Character amnesia is extremely common among native speakers of Chinese and Japanese. From Wikipedia[1]: > Another anecdotal example can be seen during a spelling bee show hosted on CCTV in 2013, where only 30% of participants were able to write "toad" (Chinese: 癞蛤蟆; pinyin: Lài há ma) in Chinese. That sort of thing simply can't happen in phonetic writing systems. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia
- looki 11y agoI'm not disagreeing with you - I actually agree that this is a big problem with the system, but I believe most outsiders have no idea that there is any phonetic connection between the characters.