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While much Sino-Japanese vocabulary was borrowed from Chinese, a considerable amount was created by the Japanese themselves as they coined new words using Sino-Japanese forms. These are known as wasei-kango ( 和製漢語 , Japanese-created kango ) ; compare to wasei-eigo ( 和製英語 , Japanese-created English) .
Wasei-kango (Japanese: 和製漢語, "Japanese-made Chinese words") are those words in the Japanese language composed of Chinese morphemes but invented in Japan rather than borrowed from China. Such terms are generally written using kanji and read according to the on'yomi pronunciations of the characters.
These are known as Wasei-kango, or Japanese-made Chinese words. For example, the word for telephone, 電話 denwa in Japanese, was derived from the Chinese words for "electric" and "conversation." It was then calqued as diànhuà in Mandarin Chinese, điện thoại in Vietnamese and 전화 jeonhwa in Korean. [8]
The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten is intended for reading Chinese and does not cover Japanese words created since the Meiji era. This is the format for main character entries: Pronunciations, in Sino-Japanese borrowings , Middle Chinese with every fanqie spelling and rime dictionary category listed in the Jiyun , and Modern Standard Chinese in the Zhuyin ...
Loanwords have entered written and spoken Chinese from many sources, including ancient peoples whose descendants now speak Chinese. In addition to phonetic differences, varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese often have distinct words and phrases left from their original languages which they continue to use in daily life and sometimes even in Mandarin.
When displayed as a Chinese ideograph, fu is often displayed upside-down on diagonal red squares. The reasoning is based on a wordplay: in nearly all varieties of Chinese, the words for 倒; dào; 'upside-down' and 到; dào; 'to arrive' are homophonous. Therefore, the phrase 'upside-down fu ' sounds nearly identical to the phrase 'good luck ...
For example, Tōkyō 東京, is Dōngjīng in Mandarin Chinese. Also, as Japanese cannot end words with consonants (except for moraic n), borrowings of Middle Chinese words ending in a stop had a paragoge added so that, for example, Middle Chinese kwok (國) was borrowed as koku.
In the tables, the first two columns contain the Chinese characters representing the classifier, in traditional and simplified versions when they differ. The next four columns give pronunciations in Standard (Mandarin) Chinese, using pinyin; Cantonese, in Jyutping and Yale, respectively; and Minnan (Taiwan). The last column gives the classifier ...