A Human Work
by John on Oct.13, 2009, under Main Stuff
In my studies of Japanese, I’ve learned quite a lot of things. But probably the most valuable lesson I’ve picked up on thus far, besides being able to tell the men’s room from the ladies’ room, is this: like all languages, Japanese is the creation of the human intellect. It was not given to the world from divine sources, nor was it imparted to us from visitors beyond the stars. At its very core, our languages are rooted in the workings of an ordinary human brain.
Which is why none of them are consistently logical, sensible, or even internally consistent.
5 comments for this entry:
October 13th, 2009 on 9:37 pm
Alas that we are not the Kin of the Stars!
Alas!
October 13th, 2009 on 9:37 pm
Put another way – are you having a grammar question hangup?
October 13th, 2009 on 9:55 pm
Man, we’re not even to proper grammar yet; still just mangling preconstructed sentences.
What prompted this was apparently the fact that while a seven-day week is more or less universal to most cultures for some inexplicable reason, none of them can agree on what each of those days signifies. Except maybe Fridays being payday, which is the only mnemonic I can reliably use to remember that it’s “kinyoobi”.
October 15th, 2009 on 4:19 pm
There are three major reasons why we have seven-day weeks:
1. In ancient times, there were seven major astronomical objects: the sun, the moon, and the five other known planets.
2. It takes roughly seven days for the moon to complete one phase of its cycle.
3. For these reasons, the Romans used a seven-day week when adopting the Julian calendar, and the entire rest of the world ended up falling under the influence of Rome either directly or indirectly over the next two millennia.
There’s also the fact that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, but I think it’s a myth that this had a great effect on calendars (since the Julian calendar was adopted several centuries before Christianity became the state religion of Rome).
Rob
October 16th, 2009 on 8:48 am
Actually, I’m surprised, John.
What those days signify isn’t 100% agreed on, but like languages on the same branch of the language tree, you can see the interrelations. (For example, Spanish and English both have m-words for mother, while something on a COMPLETELY different branch of the language tree does not.)
getsuyoubi – Moon Day, which is where “Monday” comes from.
nichiyoubi – Sun Day… uh, yeah.
Granted, the rest of the days might have meanings in Japanese that don’t seem apparent in English, but if I were to dig back on “Wednes” I MIGHT find a water association for all I know.
I’m assuming you know that the “kin” of kinyoubi is gold? Pointless anime lesson: The mystical Silver Crystal in Sailor Moon is the GINzuishou… and Mamoru has a counterpart, the Golden Crystal, which gets called the KINzuishou. Perhaps more to your speed, the Gold Needles of the FF series are “Kin no Hari.” I’ll give you a guess as to what Hari means just from context…