日本語会話: The Japanese Conversation Thread

[GoktimusPrime]

Another interesting case of convergent evolution in language - how four has been rendered in Kanji and Roman numerals.

KANJI: 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十
ROMAN: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X

When first learning these numbers, the first thing that jumps to mind is why four bucks the trend. Why isn't "Quattuor" written as four vertical lines, and why isn't "yon" written as four horizontal lines?

Well, as it turns out, they used to be written as four lines!
Thus...
一二三亖
I II III IIII
But it's believed that 三/亖 and III/IIII became tricky to discern when written in small writing and/or when read at a distance. Thus bucking the trend and changing the characters just alleviated initial confusion between three and four.

Now the Roman numeral for Quattuor makes sense, it's 1 before 5: IV. And the trend continues with other numbers like 9 being 1 before 8 (IX) etc. But what about Kanji? As it turns out, the character 四 didn't originally mean "four." It originally meant "breath" and evolved from an image of a mouth (口) with teeth and tongue inside.

目目...目目
.鼻......鼻
.口......四 ...... Kanji: the ancient world's answer to Emoji

"So how did "breath" come to mean "four"?!"
Homophones. Apparently in Old or Middle Chinese and Japanese, the word for breath was pronounced in the exact same way as the word for four. Thus people just started writing "breath" as a written synonym for four, and it eventually replaced the word entirely, and a new Kanji had to be devised for "breath" (息).

#themoreyouknow

[Shirokaze]

Another interesting case of convergent evolution in language - how four has been rendered in Kanji and Roman numerals.

KANJI: 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十
ROMAN: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X

When first learning these numbers, the first thing that jumps to mind is why four bucks the trend. Why isn't "Quattuor" written as four vertical lines, and why isn't "yon" written as four horizontal lines?

Well, as it turns out, they used to be written as four lines!
Thus...
一二三亖
I II III IIII
But it's believed that 三/亖 and III/IIII became tricky to discern when written in small writing and/or when read at a distance. Thus bucking the trend and changing the characters just alleviated initial confusion between three and four.

Now the Roman numeral for Quattuor makes sense, it's 1 before 5: IV. And the trend continues with other numbers like 9 being 1 before 8 (IX) etc. But what about Kanji? As it turns out, the character 四 didn't originally mean "four." It originally meant "breath" and evolved from an image of a mouth (口) with teeth and tongue inside.

目目...目目
.鼻......鼻
.口......四 ...... Kanji: the ancient world's answer to Emoji

"So how did "breath" come to mean "four"?!"
Homophones. Apparently in Old or Middle Chinese and Japanese, the word for breath was pronounced in the exact same way as the word for four. Thus people just started writing "breath" as a written synonym for four, and it eventually replaced the word entirely, and a new Kanji had to be devised for "breath" (息).

#themoreyouknow

Very interesting read, love hearing about the origins of kanji. I'm about 8 months in to my formal Japanese studies, and I usually find that learning about the origin of a kanji helps my brain retain the information.