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To further complicate things, there are the 'kokuji" - characters that were invented in Japan, used only in Japan, and only have Japanese pronunciations - yet a
by ThinkingGuy 4y ago
To further complicate things, there are the 'kokuji" - characters that were invented in Japan, used only in Japan, and only have Japanese pronunciations - yet are still considered kanji ("Chinese characters)".
Examples:
働 "work"
峠 "mountain pass"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Kokuji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Kokuji
- Dalewyn 4y ago>峠 "mountain pass" Incidentially, the backstory behind that kanji is hilarious. The kanji is composed of the kanjis for "mountain" on the left side, and "up" and "down" on the upper right and lower right sides respectively. You know what a mountain pass does? Go up and down a mountain.
- Macha 4y agoThis is how a lot of kanji are formed. For example 町 (town) is 田 (rice paddy) + 丁 (street). I guess at some point in language formation a lot of towns were primarily collections of rice paddies.
- zxspectrum1982 4y ago働 exists in Chinese too, meaning "labor" 峠 does not exist in Chinese although many Chinese dictionaries (most notably the CC-CEDICT) include it
- mytailorisrich 4y agoI think 'kanji' should be interpreted at large. This is the Chinese writing system and inventing new characters (which happens everywhere this writing system is used) add to the whole corpus of kanji/hanzi even if some are invented or used in specific countries. 峠 has a mandarin pronunciation apparently: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B3%A0/4336929 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B3%A0/4336929