4 ms·
Not quite the same thing. The character 子 has many different readings, meaning it is pronounced differently depending on context. E.g. 子 on its own is KO, but
by smrq 8y ago
Not quite the same thing. The character 子 has many different readings, meaning it is pronounced differently depending on context. E.g. 子 on its own is KO, but in the word 中性子 (chuuseishi) it is pronounced SHI. Those different pronunciations can be combined to a somewhat sensible phrase when spoken. But that phrase when written would come out as 猫の子子猫、獅子の子子獅子. So it's more of a pun than a grammar quirk. I feel like it's more related to the English "word" ghoti (fish), as it's specifically a quirk of the writing system.
But I had never seen this before and it's fascinating! I don't mean to sound pedantic, I just think it's interesting how different languages have different sorts of technical oddities.
- xelxebar 8y agoIt's also interesting how の can be inserted as needed, a la 山手線 or 井上さん. Old Japanese works quite a bit differrently than the modern, productive sort.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoIs that perhaps related to how traditionally, Japan wrote in Classical Chinese, then used a system for “reading” it as Japanese?
- xelxebar 8y agoI suspect so, since this kind of thing becomes more frequent as you go back in time. I think that's the same story for why some two-character words seem to have backwards word-ording, e.g. 日本に滞在する vs 在日する, or 米国へ渡る vs 渡米する. I've also noticed that readings seem to become more liberal in general. These days we tend to think of kanji having rigid associations to readings; however, you'll sometimes see some characters replacing semantically similar ones, despite the readings being different. I also suspect this flexibility is how Japanese acquired such a complicated mapping between it's written and spoken forms. Blah, blah blah. You get me on this subject and I can ramble endlessly. :)