colorful metal
I’m drilling myself on Japanese kanji, and I came to a wacky realization … the word for steel, “hagane,” literally means “grey metal.” It turns out there’s a whole bevy of color based metals in Japanese: copper is “akagane,” or “red metal”; silver is “shirogane” or “white metal”; iron is “kurogane” or “black metal”; gold is “kogane” or “yellow metal.” But these other metals are usually called “dou,” “gin,” “tetsu,” and “kin,” respectively, and the alternative “color metal” readings aren’t matched by a similar repeated structure in the kanji; the names are totally only the spoken language. Hagane is the only color-metal name still in regular use, near as I can tell. But I was tickled to notice this.
And on the subject of colorful metal: The Darkness totally rock your face. I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED, LAAAAAAAAHHHUUUUUUUUVVVVVVVVE!!!
CSS 2.0
October 28, 2003 at 10:45 pm
When you first saw the darkness, you were skeptical, for sure. But then you realized, as I did, that they are an excellent representation of all that is good, rocking, sinful, holy, sexy, amazing, hilarious, and glorious in this world. I too believe in a thing called love, and I have the Darkness to thank for it.
October 29, 2003 at 12:44 am
I know I’m nowhere even approaching as good at Japanese as you are, but I noticed a fun thing about the language today, too. The secretary at Vivid, Mayumi, was helping me translate adjectives used to describe people today (that’s making a long story as short as I can) and I noticed the ending of “zuyoi”–like gamanzuyoi for patient, and chikara(?)zuyoi for powerful–so I know that it sorta means “strong at such and such.” It was kinda cool. Now I wonder what other words use that ending.
Sorry if this is incoherent. >_
October 29, 2003 at 3:11 am
Hrm, the color thing is interesting… I once read the good ol’ sushi mainstay tekkamaki is named such because the tuna resembles red hot iron. (such a name is kind of a let-down compared to the mythological origins of kappamaki, but it’s more pleasant than being eating and being reminded of a critter than rips out your intenstines)
October 29, 2003 at 3:12 am
Blah, I need to hit preview more often after rearranging sentences. :|
October 29, 2003 at 3:55 am
The discrepancy in the language that you’ve noticed is probably an artifact of the import of Chinese (via Buddhist Koreans) in about 450 CE. The Japanese had their own spoken language but no written equivalent. Since they were mostly farmers, their language had a lot of words for describing stuff that is interesting to farmers (witness the zillion-odd words for rice, rain, etc). Chinese came in and became the language of scholars, who learned to read the Buddhist texts. Then they started writing Japanese using Chinese characters, simply by applying their existing words to Chinese characters of the same meaning. This is why Japanese has “onyomi” and “kunyomi”–onyomi is the original Chinese pronunciation, while kunyomi is (usually) the Japanese word that predated the introduction of Kanji to Japan. Witness the character for “mountain.” The onyomi, “san” or “sen,” is the original Chinese, while “yama” is the word that Japanese people used before they had a character to write.
You’ll notice that most scholarly words in Japanese are built from the onyomi readings of kanji, either because the words themselves were imported from Chinese or because the words were created by scholarly types later in history (like “kagaku” for “chemistry”).
In the case of most metals, I’d guess that the Japanese had words for steel and the like before Chinese was introduced, which is why it sounds like two words but the kanji is written as one. Note that “hagane” is the kunyomi for the “steel” character. The onyomi is “kou”, which is probably the original Chinese.
Linguistics is cool-ass stuff.
waka
October 29, 2003 at 6:54 am
Chinese:Japanese::Latin:English as far as scholarly-sounding words.
October 29, 2003 at 11:14 am
The Darkness. A hit with dozens of ppl at the office today. Thanks AV.
-J
October 29, 2003 at 1:06 pm
LESS LINGUISTICS MORE FACE-ROCKING
October 29, 2003 at 1:58 pm
Oh my, directed by… Alex Smith?! Damn, localization AND head jive jammin’ — what a guy!