hey hanzi master, can you teach me the difference of meaning between 倭 and 矮?

So apparently, 矮 is the de facto word for dwarf. 倭 - the word for Japan - probably came from the dwarf word. This all happened several thousands of years before my birth or VCRs, so I am going to admit that I am only speculating.

In last night's Japan vs. Australia World Cup match, they repeatedly referred to the Aussie striker Kennedy not by his name but as "194 centimeters." I know that pain.

Meanwhile, last night's USA 0 vs Czech Republic 3 World Cup match has proved that there seems to still be an American obsession with self-important bragging, cultural isolationism and general disrespect to foreigners. I know that pain.

I was in the states last week. Every single half hour chunk of news I saw (5 or 6 of them total) featured a small piece on the world cup, and a newscaster (usually female) saying that they just didnt get what all the fuss was about, then asking if the US had a shot at winning.

You german-speakers are right, by the way, it is a pretty wretched place (at least SF is).

"Meanwhile, last night's USA 0 vs Czech Republic 3 World Cup match has proved that there seems to still be an American obsession with self-important bragging, cultural isolationism and general disrespect to foreigners."

Huh? An America loss in soccer proves that America is obsessed with bragging?

these comments are to lame. it would insulting to even call the retarted. seriously guys? "hi, all i can do is flame bait"
get a life.. come on!
it's not even like your wasting marxy's bandwith. your wasting mine!

ah, die Niebelungen

hey hanzi detective, do you say 1)the part "委" has a meaning of "small" or "dwarf"?

Or 2)hanzis which have common parts share same meanings? ie. 海=悔? 蛙=畦?　村=討?

Is there third tentative?

de facto word? I know hanzis of many stroke counts are sometimes changed into simpler ones, but in this case, why?

Taking away Dzima's right to flame is a violation of his human rights. It's his one sole gift to the world!

If you would read Japanese, try this.
http://homepage3.nifty.com/rosetta_stone/wissenshaft/wa.html

If you wouldn't like it, go ahead. Speculating is your gift to the world :p

Interesting link.

Basically, Japan's wa is 倭, which is not necessarily 矮, dwarf. This page has a lot of speculation and analyis trying to pin the meaning down - with most people disagreeing that 倭 actually means dwarf. One idea is that the sound 倭 represents a sound - not a concept - based on what people in Japan called themselves. Some of this speculation, however, seems to be based on the presupposition that Japanese is a mixed Altaic-Austronesian language, which there is no real objective evidence for.

Another piece of evidence seems to be based on the work of Ono Susumu - the Todai linguistic genius who tried to convince the world that Japanese was related to the Dravidian languages of India. Right.

The "wa" as meaningless-sound seems reasonable enough, but I have no context for Han Chinese naming systems to assume that this is how foreign tribes got their name. Whatever the case, the dwarf-connection was strong enough to make the Japanese switch the "wa" kanji to something else.

Taking away Dzima's right to flame

Ths pst s n f th mst trllsh thngs v vr rd n my lf.

Mrxy s lke n f ths Jpn Tdy rglrs, wh r lwys whngng bt hw "hrd" thr lf s n Jpn r tllng th wrld hw thngs "bck hm r bttr". Th sl dffrnc s tht h hs ... mstr's dgr.

EDITOR: I will be removing all vowels from Dzima's posts until he posts comments with something other than straight Marxy bashing. This punishment will never be extended to other commenters.

That does make his comments much more entertaining to read. "mstr's dgr" seems to sum things up nicely.

So without making marxy the issue, as dzima seems to be doing out of jealousy, I just want to thank him for reading through that linguistic examination of 和 and let him know that I am going to totally take his word for it since I don't feel like digging through that link myself.

Are there any examinations of Meiji-era nationalism development through language? An English source I remember flipping through is A History of Japanese Writing, but that seemed to concentrate more on the development of the modern hiragana-katakana-kanji mix that we have today, not exactly the nation-building propaganda that we're talking about here. I'd love to just see a list of modern-era words that were specifically created by the Meiji leaders.

Reading stuff like this makes me jealous in a more positive way than dzima I suppose. I want to enter a master's program in Japan precisely so I can spend hours in the library scouring Meiji-era documents and wartime propaganda to flesh out influences on modern-day Japan!

Hahaha, the punishment for flaming is you have to write in a pseudo-Semitic script? Hahaha.

Adamu, start with 愛国心、and do it fast!

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/教育基本法

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/11/news/japan.php

"In [Tokyo's] high schools, the principals and teachers used to make school-related decisions together. But the board downgraded teachers to advisers in 1998, effectively leaving all decisions to the principals; two months ago, the board prohibited teachers from raising their hands in meetings to voice their opinions."

Ah, post-political harmony, how sweet it is!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Japanese_nationalism.jpg

Japanese nationalists do use the old kanji 倭 from time to time.

Interesting picture. Someone did intentionally change it to "和" somewhere down the line, though.