Post
by Suupaa Gohan 2 » Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:34 pm
I'm not quite sure if this is what you're asking, but what I'm guessing you mean is like, for words that can have more than one possible meaning, how do you know which meaning is tied to which characters? ...Which I think I worded just as badly to where that made no sense...ngh...
Well if you mean what I think you mean, ask yourself the same question about English. I know the words 'fly' and 'fly' are spelled the same way, for instance. If I see the word standing alone I don't know what context it's in...is it the insect, or the verb of soaring through the air? However, slap it into a sentence, and there's no question...the context tells you, and you just know by default. That'd work the same way in Japanese, as well, regardless of whether or not seeing いぬ on its own could mean 犬 (dog) or 往ぬ (to move on; to pass by).
Another thing that happens in Japanese is the spelling. This happens in English, too; for instance I know that even while they're pronounced the same, 'grate' and 'great' are very different words. If I see that they're spelled different I automatically know which word someone is trying to say. In Japanese it's the same way in regards to Kanji. Realize that most Japanese isn't written solely in Hiragana, but rather Kanji with Furugana characters representing the pronunciation of the character. There are some Kanji characters that can be read more than one way, so if the Kanji is on its own without the context of a sentence clarifying it, you may not know what word it's supposed to mean (like the 'fly'/'fly' example).
That's why Furugana, or Hiragana characters you often see floating above the Kanji, are there to tell you the way the character is meant to be pronounced. On the other angle of the 'spelling' issue are then the words that are spelled differently but sound the same ('grate'/'great' as the English example) - a nice, Dragonball-related example would be 'ki', which can mean numerous things beyond the meaning we're all familiar with. If I hear the word 'ki' on its own, well, does it mean 'energy'? Does it mean 'tree'? It could be either. But if I see 気 (energy) as opposed to 木 (tree) I know what meaning is meant to apply to that 'ki'.
...That make any sense? I'm terrible at explaining -_-;
Last edited by
Suupaa Gohan 2 on Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"I came to save you thanks to a magic bean. And if you think it was easy to find that bean, you're wrong."
--'Big Green' Yajirobe
I'm really curious about learning Japanese. If you could link to some sites that help you learn to speak and read it, that would be amazing. Thanks in advance.