Re: The Weak Link

> >I'd ask things like, "What does it mean to say a character has a
> >'borrowed' meaning? And who decided it would get borrowed, and
> >why?" Or, "Here we've got five phonetic compounds with the same
> >component, just combined with different radicals. Why doesn't the
> >component express exactly the same meaning in each character?" I got
> >answers all right, none of them correct. Too bad I didn't know about
> >sci.lang.japan in those days.

Chris Kern wrote:

> This isn't something that the average person, or even the average
> teacher, would know unless they specifically studied kanji etymology.
> Particularly if they were a native Japanese TA -- the way kanji are
> taught in Japanese schools is just to drill them with no real
> explanation beyond that.

I'll take your word for it. But the professors are language
professionals and the T.A.s doctoral candidates. All of them are being
paid to educate non-native learners of Japanese. It's their
responsibility to know kanji basics-or know how to get that info when
asked. And I'd argue that kanji basics include a certain familiarity
with the nature and workings of something as fundamental as compound
characters.
You're right that "borrowing" is a thorny aspect of kanji
studies. Still, this practice impacts the meanings of many commonly
used characters. Students who prefer to understand rather than simply
remember the characters need that kind of information. In requesting
it, I was asking for a clarification or expansion of what was said on
the subject in an English-language source (Henshall) marketed to the
non-specialist reader. Surely it wasn't expecting too much for my
instructors to consult the far more detailed Japanese-language
resources at their disposal to address the issue.
The kanji education I received presented no relevant historical or
linguistics background. This left the student with two choices:
memorize without understanding, or recall on the basis of arbitrary
memory prompts. That's inadequate, not to say pathetic. Students
enrolled at a university are entitled to a presentation method based on
sound linguistics principles.

> I'm not even sure I understand your question here -- why would you
> expect a phonetic component to express the same meaning in multiple
> kanji?

My initial understanding of the definition of a phonetic compound was
defective. I believed it was "A character in which one component
hints at the meaning while another suggests both the meaning and the
pronunciation." Later I discovered the warping effect of "both the
meaning and." The phonetic element CAN bear on the meaning, but
doesn't necessarily. That explains why it can "mean" one thing in 3
characters and completely different things in others. Again, that's a
simple point the language pros around me should have been able to
identify and clear up, regardless of what kind of training they may or
may not have received.

Graig

.

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