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Afterthought: Kawaii (cute) is actually 可愛い, also containing "可", which literally may mean something like "a thing that can be easily loved", or simpler, cute.

Afterthought: Kawaii (cute) is actually 可愛い, also containing "可", which literally may mean something like "a thing that can be easily loved", or simpler, cute. But you wouldn't be able to guess that if you just know the Kanji.

Freak_NL 7y ago
Perhaps not the best example. Knowing that 可 is usually read 'ka' in compound words, and that 愛 is read as 'ai', you get to 'ka-ai-i', at which point the meaning of 愛 (love) will likely push you to かわいい (kawaii).
- WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 7y ago
  Of course, but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". My point is that if you don't know the word, you can't infer the meaning from the Kanji, except in very simple cases. That's why memorizing Kanji alone really isn't as helpful. Knowing 90% of Kanji meaning and reading doesn't help you much in understanding compounds/words.
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    > but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". Have you ever been around non-native students of Japanese? This is the one word that is pretty much guaranteed to be known by all with an interest in anything remotely Japanese. Your point is valid, but kawaii is perhaps not the right example.
    - bsder 7y ago
      Actually, I suspect it's a pretty decent example. Most non-native students of Japanese will almost always encounter that word in hiragana, katakana, or even Romaji--encountering that as a kanji is actually remarkably rare. The fact that the kanji for kawaii is an ateji makes it one of those odd ducks.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > Most non-native students of Japanese will almost always encounter that word in hiragana, katakana, or even Romaji--encountering that as a kanji is actually remarkably rare. Interestingly, it's very common for students of Chinese. The word 可爱 (kě'ài, "cute") is dirt-common, but it isn't native to Chinese -- it originates as a loan from Japanese. This isn't clear to the Chinese themselves, who use 卡哇伊 (kǎwāyī) if they want to refer to the Japanese word. There's another modern word for cute, 萌 méng, which is also a loan from Japanese, though I think popular awareness of it as a weird loanword is higher, since its literal meaning ("sprout") is so far removed from the concept "cute".
  - oska 7y ago
    The counterpoint is that if you are fluent in spoken Japanese you can get by with a fairly minimal number of kanji (and complete understanding of the kana as well, obviously). Which is the trend with native Japanese people too.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
I don't know for Japanese as meaning sometimes shifts from Chinese, but in Chinese the standard definition of 可 is "can, may, be able to". You obviously learn it by itself but as Chinese words are mostly a combination of 2 characters, you immediately also have to learn e.g. 可以 (can, may, be able to), 可能 (maybe), 可爱 (cute) etc. So someone who's learning characters in order to get 90% coverage (or whatever) would not simply learn characters but learn actual words. Learning characters in isolation would not be that helpful, indeed. When you don't know a word (i.e. a combination) but you know the individual characters it is much easier to learn the new word either by guessing or checking. In context, the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess, for example. Even in English 'lovable' is a synonym of 'cute'.
- fenomas 7y ago
  > the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess To be honest this whole thread about 可愛い is more or less bonkers, because it's an ateji. The word's meaning doesn't derive from the characters, the characters got arbitrarily attached to an existing word because they were similar in sound and meaning. As such, the whole thing is about as meaningful as talking about how easy it is to guess that 珈琲 means "coffee"...
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    I must say I don't know much about ateji in Japanese. In this case, though it does seem that the characters where chosen at least partly because of their actual meaning. It seems that it is both an ateji and a jukujikun [1] because the word does not come from the characters but the characters do have the correct meaning. [1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#J...
    - fenomas 7y ago
      > the characters where chosen at least partly because of their actual meaning Sure, didn't I say they were in my post? The point was, in a discussion of how well X predicts Y, it's not very useful to examine a test case where Y came first and X was chosen post-hoc to match it.
xxxpupugo 7y ago
Actually, no. 可 is like 'the be able to' prefix in Japanese/Chinese, so 可愛 is can be seen as a compound word because of that, literally means 'is able to be loved' In Chinese, it can be further compounded into many common phrases: 可悲(pathetic, 可+'sad') 可气(annoying/irritating, 可+'anger') 可怜(pitiful, 可+'pity') 可恨(resentful, 可+'hate') What would be a more suitable example would be 可(ke)乐(le) in my opinion, in which case it means Coke in Chinese, it is a transliteration.
- namelosw 7y ago
  Yes, Most of the time 可 means 'able' in '__able'. But it could also be 'a thing that can be easily loved'. Rr simply, 'pleasing'. For example, 可口 means tasty. So, 可爱 could be understood in both ways actually.

Freak_NL 7y ago

Perhaps not the best example. Knowing that 可 is usually read 'ka' in compound words, and that 愛 is read as 'ai', you get to 'ka-ai-i', at which point the meaning of 愛 (love) will likely push you to かわいい (kawaii).

WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 7y ago
Of course, but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". My point is that if you don't know the word, you can't infer the meaning from the Kanji, except in very simple cases. That's why memorizing Kanji alone really isn't as helpful. Knowing 90% of Kanji meaning and reading doesn't help you much in understanding compounds/words.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  > but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". Have you ever been around non-native students of Japanese? This is the one word that is pretty much guaranteed to be known by all with an interest in anything remotely Japanese. Your point is valid, but kawaii is perhaps not the right example.
  - bsder 7y ago
    Actually, I suspect it's a pretty decent example. Most non-native students of Japanese will almost always encounter that word in hiragana, katakana, or even Romaji--encountering that as a kanji is actually remarkably rare. The fact that the kanji for kawaii is an ateji makes it one of those odd ducks.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Most non-native students of Japanese will almost always encounter that word in hiragana, katakana, or even Romaji--encountering that as a kanji is actually remarkably rare. Interestingly, it's very common for students of Chinese. The word 可爱 (kě'ài, "cute") is dirt-common, but it isn't native to Chinese -- it originates as a loan from Japanese. This isn't clear to the Chinese themselves, who use 卡哇伊 (kǎwāyī) if they want to refer to the Japanese word. There's another modern word for cute, 萌 méng, which is also a loan from Japanese, though I think popular awareness of it as a weird loanword is higher, since its literal meaning ("sprout") is so far removed from the concept "cute".
- oska 7y ago
  The counterpoint is that if you are fluent in spoken Japanese you can get by with a fairly minimal number of kanji (and complete understanding of the kana as well, obviously). Which is the trend with native Japanese people too.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

I don't know for Japanese as meaning sometimes shifts from Chinese, but in Chinese the standard definition of 可 is "can, may, be able to". You obviously learn it by itself but as Chinese words are mostly a combination of 2 characters, you immediately also have to learn e.g. 可以 (can, may, be able to), 可能 (maybe), 可爱 (cute) etc. So someone who's learning characters in order to get 90% coverage (or whatever) would not simply learn characters but learn actual words. Learning characters in isolation would not be that helpful, indeed. When you don't know a word (i.e. a combination) but you know the individual characters it is much easier to learn the new word either by guessing or checking. In context, the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess, for example. Even in English 'lovable' is a synonym of 'cute'.

fenomas 7y ago
> the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess To be honest this whole thread about 可愛い is more or less bonkers, because it's an ateji. The word's meaning doesn't derive from the characters, the characters got arbitrarily attached to an existing word because they were similar in sound and meaning. As such, the whole thing is about as meaningful as talking about how easy it is to guess that 珈琲 means "coffee"...
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  I must say I don't know much about ateji in Japanese. In this case, though it does seem that the characters where chosen at least partly because of their actual meaning. It seems that it is both an ateji and a jukujikun [1] because the word does not come from the characters but the characters do have the correct meaning. [1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#J...
  - fenomas 7y ago
    > the characters where chosen at least partly because of their actual meaning Sure, didn't I say they were in my post? The point was, in a discussion of how well X predicts Y, it's not very useful to examine a test case where Y came first and X was chosen post-hoc to match it.

xxxpupugo 7y ago

Actually, no. 可 is like 'the be able to' prefix in Japanese/Chinese, so 可愛 is can be seen as a compound word because of that, literally means 'is able to be loved' In Chinese, it can be further compounded into many common phrases: 可悲(pathetic, 可+'sad') 可气(annoying/irritating, 可+'anger') 可怜(pitiful, 可+'pity') 可恨(resentful, 可+'hate') What would be a more suitable example would be 可(ke)乐(le) in my opinion, in which case it means Coke in Chinese, it is a transliteration.

namelosw 7y ago
Yes, Most of the time 可 means 'able' in '__able'. But it could also be 'a thing that can be easily loved'. Rr simply, 'pleasing'. For example, 可口 means tasty. So, 可爱 could be understood in both ways actually.