The Power of Babel

Pondering alone taking a shower, something irrelevant to this holiday season though it is Christmas Eve. Why my primary language Japanese, my mother tongue has such diversity in reading and pronounciation though we share the same character with Chinese? Then I came up with a few different words that contain the same character "人". This character basically means a person or a man in general. You can add this particular character either before or after another character, or even in the middle of other characters. For instance, if you're a Japanese learner try reading them.



>>>QUIZ JAPAN!!<<<
* Read each word and enumerate its pronounciation, then if possible, its meaning too.

1) 人間
2) 罪人
3) 武人
4) 狩人
5) 防人
6) 何人
7) 舎人


Can you pronounce them right? Can you guess their meanings? I hope so for Japanese persons, I really do. Since some of them are historically quite important words and notions. One of my acquaintance once asked me if I'm still fluent in Japanese. As a matter of course I am. However, I had no opportunity to show my proficiency so far. I had no chance to prove myself that my Japanese proficiency is still as good as someone who has been living in Japan. So I tried to come up with as many words as possible that use the character "人" but with different pronounciation.


Then I came up with those 7 words. I felt great relief as I was able to think of different words that share the same character. Why you need to memorize them all? The answer is simple. If you can't read Chinese characters (Kanji), you can't read newspapers nor catch up with higher education such as the one in University. Well, I'm sure readers must be eager to know the answers, so let me put them first.


>>>ANSWER KEYS<<<

1) 人間(NINN・GENN) A Human
2) 罪人(TSUMI・BITO／ZAI・NINN) A Sinner / A Criminal
3) 武人(BU・JINN) An old fashioned Warrior rather than a modern soldier
4) 狩人(KARI・UDO) A Hunter (& A former singer Duo...lol)
5) 防人(SAKI・MORI) A special garrison at Kyushu post during ancient Japan
6) 何人(NANN・PITO) Anyone in Legal term: e.g. "Any person shall not be allowed ..."
7) 舎人(TO・NERI) A Chamberlain/an officer of court ceremony in the Imperial Palace


During compulsory education that consists of Elementary & Junior High School, we learn at least 1000 Chinese characters during the former followed by 3000 more during the latter, in addition to 50 Hiragana characters, 50 Katakana characters and 26 Alphabet & 10 arabic digits(1, 2, 3 ... 0). 4000 characters are still NEVER enough to read a newspaper from cover to cover. You should be able to memorize at least 10000 Chinese characters in order to enter, survive & graduate from a University for sure. If you are language major such as Classical Japanese or Classical Chinese, the number would be more.

We'd shared the Chinese characters with Chinese up until the Cultural Revolution. Since then they simplified characters thus the old-fashioned classical Chinese characters remains in Japan. Even in Japan, some characters are modernized, so the real old-fashioned characters may exist in places like Taiwan or so I suppose. Anyway, don't get discouraged folks, Life is a learning process. Happy Learning !