本物(honmono) means “the real deal.” 本(jap: hon, chi: ben3) means “origin” or “source”. The character is a tree – 木 – with a line through the base to highlight the root, or “source” of the tree. The word for Japan – 日本(jap: nihon, chi: ri4ben3) – is “the source of the sun”.
Tag Archives: kanji
Piano no Mori – Sassy Children are the Best Children
The nature of translation is that nuance will be lost. You want the text to be understood by people who live within a different cultural context and in a language with different sentence structures, idioms, and that sometimes just cannot convey all of the nuances and connotations in the original text. Reading this text in its original language, however clumsily and slowly I’m doing it, is shedding light on all of the color and connotation I’ve been missing. And I feel like I’m getting to know (and falling in love with) these characters all over again.
Piano no Mori – An Eye for a Head
人間(ningen) is the first time in this book we’ve seen the definitions deviate. In Japanese, 人間 means human being (in this context). In Chinese, 人間(ren2jian1) means “the human world”, as in the mortal realms. Breaking it down, we get 人 – person and 間 – space1. It seems what has happened in Japanese is that this started out as a Buddhist phrase: 人間界(ningenkai), meaning the human world in Buddhist cosmology. Perhaps, since 界 already means “world”, 人間 was taken to mean “human”.
Piano no Mori – No Discussion Needed
Lots of new kanji here, and also a fun phrase. もちろん(mochiron) is a super common Japanese phrase that means “of course”. The phrase is generally written in kana, but does have associated kanji: 勿論(chi: wu4lun4). The phrase literally means “do not discuss it,” or, in English, “to go without saying.”
Piano no Mori – A Real Heart has Chambers
At first glance, 必 (kanara, meaning must) and 心 (kokoro, meaning heart) look very similar2. Tracing the evolution of the character shows however that they actually started out as two completely different characters and converged over time.
Japanese Etymology: Piano no Mori
I find the etymology of Japanese words super interesting, partly because it helps me remember my vocab, and partly for its own sake. I’m going to try to work my way through translating the first volume of Piano no Mori, a manga about two boys of very different backgrounds who grow up playing the piano. I love this story, and I hope that will motivate me to put time into this project. Just on the first page, we see quite a few interesting etymologies. 宮 (miya) means palace or shrine. (In Chinese, 宮 (gong1) also means palace.) Miya is actually a compound word in Japanese, from 神 (kami, meaning god or spirit) and 屋 (ya, meaning house).
Etymology Adventures 