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There are many false friendships between the Chinese and Japanese languages. These are words that look or sound similar to those in another language but have a significantly different meaning. The majority of these false friends result from the use of Chinese traditional characters in the Japanese script.
Chinese characters are said to have been invented by Cangjie, one of the bureaucrats under the Yellow Thearch. Cangjie coined symbols known as "zi" (字) following a study of the landscape, animals, and galaxy in the sky. "Zì" (字) is the first Chinese character created, and Cangjie related it to a mythical story of the day these characters were created[ clarification needed ].
Japanese kanji borrows some words from the Chinese language. These form the relationship between the Japanese kanji and the Chinese logograph. Chinese words and characters were introduced to Japan through letters, coins, swords, and seals imported from China. As far as is currently known, King of Na gold is the earliest import bearing Chinese characters. This gold was presented to Yamato by Emperor Guangwu of Han. The Japanese of this era most likely had no knowledge of scripts and seem to have remained illiterate until the fifth century.
The earliest known Japanese documents were written by Korean officials and bilingual Chinese employed at the Yamato court. Afterwards[ clarification needed ], a group of people known as the fuhito were organised under the monarch to read and write Chinese characters. The Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, leading to increased literacy within the Japanese court. Japanese kanji could be stencilled onto thin rectangular strips of wood, which aided communication during this time.
As a result of the aforementioned lack of a Japanese writing system, Chinese was used almost exclusively in texts. The Heian period (794–1185) facilitated the emergence of a system known as kanbun , which involved the use of Chinese text with diacritical marks that allowed Japanese speakers to read and restructure Chinese sentences. Chinese characters also came to be used in writing Japanese words, resulting in modern kana syllabaries. Japan adopted a writing system known as man'yōgana and used it to write the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū . This anthology used a number of Chinese characters.
In modern Japanese, kanji is integrated into writing systems through content words such as adjective stems, noun and verb stems. The growth experienced in the integration of kanji in writing systems has increased the number of false friends existing between the Chinese and Japanese languages. In some instances, kanji is considered difficult to read relating to the context applied. For instance, hiragana and katakana are writing systems that descend from kanji and have characters that are used to write phonetic complements, adjective endings, and infected verbs used to disambiguate readings and give simple definitions to some miscellaneous words that are hard to comprehend in the writing systems.
Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted and oldest writing systems. In addition, the Chinese characters are integrated into the learning systems of most nations in East Asia and predominate in China and Japan. Consequently, most of the characters used in Japanese kanji adopt their meaning from the Chinese logographic characters. Functional literacy in written Chinese requires knowledge of between three and four thousand characters, as clearly shown in Chinese studies. Japanese kanji and Chinese logographic characters have been simplified through World War II era simplifications in kanji and China, respectively. There are numerous national standard lists of characters, pronunciations, and forms distinctly defined by Japanese kanji and Chinese writing systems. [1] In the Japanese language, common characters are written in post-WWII Japan simplified forms. Most uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms that are nearly identical to Chinese traditional forms.
Following the simplification of the characters used in Japanese and Chinese, most characters are used with similar pronunciation and structure but have different meanings according to the respective languages. [2]
False friends in writing systems occur when words in two distinct languages resemble each other in structural appearance or sound but have a different meaning. False friends can be identified as homophones, although they are culturally bound since they are defined in two particular languages. False friends have impacts on the cultural definition of the societies using the languages. For instance, the Chinese language uses numerous characters that define its language. Japanese kanji that emanate from Chinese traditional characters define the Japanese language. Consequently, the Japanese language has most of its words borrowed and developed from the Chinese tradition. [3] The two distinct languages tend to share a similar linguistic history, which is characterised by the use of homographs in the language. However, the fact that the two languages share a similar linguistic history has motivated the usage of similar words in the languages that have distinct meanings. The Chinese and Japanese languages use words that are similar but have different pronunciations in their respective languages. [1]
Therefore, while writing, individuals tend to be very careful with false friends, especially for the Chinese and Japanese languages that use similar words with different pronunciations and meanings in relation to the respective language. The Chinese and Japanese languages have numerous false friends. The following is a list of some of the most common false friends that individuals must be mindful of when writing them. Some words and expressions are similar but have different pronunciations and meanings in their respective languages. False friends present linguistic homographs and synonyms based on the culturally and societally bound languages. [2]
Among the cultural effects are contresense, which occurs when a writer uses a false friend in a context whose meaning is the opposite of the original meaning as presented in the related language. In current and modern society, writing systems have been improved following the increased number of characters integrated into the systems. Writers and learners of the languages, both Chinese and Japanese, need to be very conscious of false friends in order to deliver the exact meaning in the written context. The difference in pronunciation and meaning indicates homograph elements in false friends. This supports the fact that the Japanese language was developed from literary Chinese. [4]
While writing contexts, some characters might seem familiar to the writers, and they tend to assume they have similar meaning across different cultures. However, such characters might have different meanings across different cultures due to different definitions. For instance, Chinese linguistic analysis demonstrates different contexts that have varying meanings from the Japanese kanji, despite the fact that it is the source of most Japanese characters. Consequently, readers and writers must be careful while applying such samples of false friends.
The existence of false friends in languages governs every effort towards generating conversation across dynamic cultures. For instance, Chinese and Japanese cultures have distinct social and cultural activities that define different terminologies that determine the nature of the context to be published. [4] A bilingual writer seeking to publish context in Chinese and Japanese needs to be aware of false friends in order to present context that draws similar meaning to both languages. [5] False friends have an impact on the context presented by speakers. While presenting a speech in a bilingual society, speakers need to be aware of false friends to avoid embarrassment.
Most language learners fall into the false friends trap in the learning process. They give insight on how language changes. [6] Speakers move away from certain meanings towards others, considering the meaning of words and characters used in their context. Most of the Chinese and Japanese false friends arise through various actions of semantic change. Since most of the Japanese language characters are borrowed from the Chinese language, there is a shift that defines the similarity of the context presented. This motivates the need to be careful while writing since the meanings between the paired languages have very different raising definitions that differ in very distinct contexts. [2] Therefore, false friends have a cultural impact on writing and learning bilingual languages whose characters have some defining similarities.
This list highlights some commonly encountered false friends. [3]
| Characters | Gloss | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | Japanese | Chinese | Japanese |
| 私 | 私 | private, selfish or personal | I, me, myself |
| 娘 | 娘 | mother; woman | daughter; girl |
| 湯 | 湯 | soup (in Classical Chinese: hot water) | hot water; hot spring |
| 侍 | 侍 | to wait upon; to serve | samurai; servant |
| 走 | 走 | to walk (in Classical Chinese: to run; Cantonese: to run, leave) | to run |
| 王妃 | 王妃 | princess consort | queen |
| 棚 | 棚 | shed | shelf |
| 腕 | 腕 | wrist | arm |
| 鳥 | 鳥 | bird | can refer to either a chicken or a bird (dependent on context) |
| 豬 | 猪 | pig | boar |
| 手紙 | 手紙 | toilet paper | a letter (of the postal variety) |
| 勉強 | 勉強 | the action of forcing somebody to do something | study |
| 汽車 | 汽車 | automobile and motor vehicle | a steam locomotive |
| 先生 | 先生 | sir, mister or teacher | teacher |
| 愛人 | 愛人 | a lover or mistress; a spouse, wife or husband (PRC only) | a lover or mistress |
| 連帶 | 連帯 | to be related; to be involved; to be entailed | solidarity |
| 老婆 | 老婆 | wife | old woman |
| 小人 | 小人 | villain | little people |
| 丈夫 | 丈夫 | husband or brave gentleman | a hero, durable, unbreakable or robustness; health |
| 風船 | 風船 | sailboat | balloon |
| 邪魔 | 邪魔 | a demon; wicked spirit; the devil | a hindrance, obstacle or nuisance |
| 非常 | 非常 | very; extremely (in Classical Chinese: something extraordinary; unusual) | something unusual; extraordinary; emergency or unusual |
| 前年 | 前年 | the year before last year | last year; the previous year |
| 方面 | 方面 | aspect | direction |
| 情報 | 情報 | intelligence; information (of a military or espionage nature) | news, information or gossip |
| 檢討 | 検討 | self-criticism | research; study; investigation; discussion |
| 新聞 | 新聞 | news | newspaper |
| 約束 | 約束 | the act of restraining; a constraint | an appointment or promise |
| 暗算 | 暗算 | scheme; to plot against | mental arithmetic [7] |
| 人間 | 人間 | the material world; human society | the personality; the character of human beings in general |
| 說話 | 説話 | to speak | a folktale or story |
| 交代 | 交代 | to hand over; to explain; to confess | alternation; change; relief; (work) shift; taking turns |
| 格式 | 格式 | format; model | formality; social rules; social standing; math expression |
| 應酬 | 応酬 | social activity; dinner party | a retort; an angry response |
| 人參/人蔘 | 人参 | ginseng | carrot |
| 放心 | 放心 | to be at ease | to be in a trance |
| 旅館 | 旅館 | hotel | a Japanese traditional-style inn |
| 風俗 | 風俗 | social tradition | social customs; the sex industry (euphemistically) [6] |
| 天井 | 天井 | atrium or courtyard (in Classical Chinese: patio) | ceiling |
| 中古 | 中古 | the Middle Ages | a second-hand item |
| 樂 | 楽 | happiness; fun | ease; comfort |
| 標榜 | 標榜 | the act of advertising; to parade; to brag or to boast | standing for someone; advocacy |
| 浴衣 | 浴衣 | a bathrobe | yukata , a type of light robe mainly used for casual wear |
| 親友 | 親友 | close friends and relatives collectively | a close friend |
| 文句 | 文句 | syntax and wording in a given manuscript | a complaint |
| 手心 | 手心 | hollow of one's palm | consideration |
| 醫生 | 医生 | medical doctor | medical student |
| 扁桃體 | 扁桃体 | tonsil (chiefly PRC) | amygdala |
| 電車 | 電車 | tram | electric multiple unit train |
Furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana printed either above or next to kanji or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as yomigana (読み仮名) and rubi in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is usually used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English embarrassed and Spanish embarazado 'pregnant'; English parents versus Portuguese parentes and Italian parenti ; English demand and French demander 'ask'; and English gift, German Gift 'poison', and Norwegian gift 'married'.
Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script.
Kana are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or magana, which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most prominent magana system being man'yōgana (万葉仮名); the two descendants of man'yōgana, (2) hiragana, and (3) katakana. There are also hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. In current usage, 'kana' can simply mean hiragana and katakana.
Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana. The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication.
In a written language, a logogram, also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a logography. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are phonemic: their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language.
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Chinese characters have a documented history spanning over three millennia, representing one of the four independent inventions of writing accepted by scholars; of these, they comprise the only writing system continuously used since its invention. Over time, the function, style, and means of writing characters have evolved greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing a language's entire vocabulary requires thousands of different characters. Characters are created according to several different principles, where aspects of both shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning.
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either homographs—words that have the same spelling —or homophones—words that have the same pronunciation —or both. Using this definition, the words row, row and row are homonyms because they are homographs ; so are the words see (vision) and sea, because they are homophones.
A homograph is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also be pronounced differently, while the Oxford English Dictionary says that the words should also be of "different origin". In this vein, The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography lists various types of homographs, including those in which the words are discriminated by being in a different word class, such as hit, the verb to strike, and hit, the noun a strike.
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The two words may be spelled the same, for example rose (flower) and rose, or spelled differently, as in rain, reign, and rein. The term homophone sometimes applies to units longer or shorter than words, for example a phrase, letter, or groups of letters which are pronounced the same as a counterpart. Any unit with this property is said to be homophonous.
Hanja, alternatively known as Hancha, is used in the writing of the Korean language by using Chinese characters.
A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is not merely spoken or signed language written down, though it can approximate that. Instead, it is a separate system with its own norms, structures, and stylistic conventions, and it often evolves differently than its corresponding spoken or signed language.
Sino-Japanese vocabulary, also known as kango, is a subset of Japanese vocabulary that originated in Chinese or was created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical structures and sentence patterns can also be identified as Sino-Japanese.
On'yomi, the Sino-Japanese reading, is the reading of a kanji based on the Chinese pronunciation of the character. A single kanji might have multiple 'on'yomi' pronunciations reflecting the Chinese pronunciations of different periods or regions.
Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with man'yōgana.
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.
In modern Japanese, ateji principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely, ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.
Japanese dictionaries have a history that began over 1300 years ago when Japanese Buddhist priests, who wanted to understand Chinese sutras, adapted Chinese character dictionaries. Present-day Japanese lexicographers are exploring computerized editing and electronic dictionaries. According to Nakao Keisuke (中尾啓介):
It has often been said that dictionary publishing in Japan is active and prosperous, that Japanese people are well provided for with reference tools, and that lexicography here, in practice as well as in research, has produced a number of valuable reference books together with voluminous academic studies. (1998:35)
Chinese characters may have several variant forms—visually distinct glyphs that represent the same underlying meaning and pronunciation. Variants of a given character are allographs of one another, and many are directly analogous to allographs present in the English alphabet, such as the double-storey ⟨a⟩ and single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩ variants of the letter A, with the latter more commonly appearing in handwriting. Some contexts require usage of specific variants.
The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja, Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, Zhuang sawndip, and Bai bowen. More divergent are the Tangut script, Khitan large script, Khitan small script and its offspring, the Jurchen script, as well as the Yi script, Sui script, and Geba syllabary, which were inspired by written Chinese but not descended directly from it. While written Chinese and many of its descendant scripts are logographic, others are phonetic, including the kana, Nüshu, and Lisu syllabaries, as well as the bopomofo semi-syllabary.
