Kids in the US drawing stick figures usually distinguish women by their long hair, but that was not the strategy employed when developing this character. If you really squint at 女, you can see that there’s arms, legs, a head, and a kind of bulge in the middle of the body. What is that bulge? (It’s a boob).
Tag Archives: languages
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”.
Etymology Adventures 