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fifthchamber
25th January 2002, 15:31
Hi all,
My question has to do with the working out of pronounciation of Kanji used in Japanese names.
It has occured to me that there must be a system used for it otherwise surely no one other than the names owner would correctly pronounce it aloud first time.
Does it follow any system at all or is it logical 'guesswork' on the part of the reader?
I am not referring to the Kanji that are set aside for use in names only but to the 'ordinary' Kanji that usually have two or three variations of sound dependant on position in the sentance and other factors. Is there one rule for these Kanji in names?
Also how would a reader seperate out the name from the rest of the text? Is it done (as I do myself) by looking at the sentance and not making any 'logical sense' out of it, or by using the four (usually) Kanji in a row as an indicator of the name?
Any help on books/resources online etc. that could help me out here would be much appreciated as it is a most difficult problem to work out. I have tried with names that I know and sometimes it makes sense but then other times falls apart. Very hard to get a grip on.
Thanks for any help given.
Abayo.

Chris Li
25th January 2002, 23:40
Originally posted by fifthchamber
Hi all,

My question has to do with the working out of pronounciation of Kanji used in Japanese names.

It has occured to me that there must be a system used for it otherwise surely no one other than the names owner would correctly pronounce it aloud first time.

Does it follow any system at all or is it logical 'guesswork' on the part of the reader?


Basically it's guesswork. There are readings that are more common than others, so for most normal names you can usually tell what the pronunciation ought to be, but there are lots of variants so people with unusual kanji or unusual readings often have their names mis-pronounced. Personal and place names are, for that reason, often very difficult to read, even for native Japanese.




Also how would a reader seperate out the name from the rest of the text? Is it done (as I do myself) by looking at the sentance and not making any 'logical sense' out of it, or by using the four (usually) Kanji in a row as an indicator of the name?

By context, mostly. The hiragana help a lot in seperating out the content.

Best,

Chris

P Goldsbury
26th January 2002, 00:37
I have in my book collection a work entitled "Japanese Names" by P G O'Neill, first published by Weatherhill in 1972. As the blurb states, it is an attempt to deal with "this problem" (i.e., how to read Japanese names) "within the limits of what is feasible". These limits appear to be quite narrow and there are many omissions in the lists (36,000 names) which O'Neill gives. In Chinese character dictionaries like the Dai-ji-gen (Kadokawa) or Kan-ji-gen (Gakken), a few readings for personal names are given under each character, but these readings are not comprehensive.

Japanese personal names appear to defy any rules whatever. There are some conventions for family names, but even here there are traps even for seasoned Japanese. In one of my classes in Hiroshima I have three students whose family names are written in the same way, with characters meaning 'old' and 'valley'. But these names are read in three different ways: Kotani, Furuya and Furutani, and I am not supposed to mistake the correct reading. Thus, our class lists always have 'furigana' readings of students' names.

The guesswork involved is one of the joys of learning Japanese!

Best regards,
_____________
P A Goldsbury,
Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Hiroshima University

Rennis
26th January 2002, 03:50
Don't worry too much if you have trouble with reading Japanese names because even the Japanese do. I can't even begin to recall the number of times I have asked various sensei what the correct reading of a name in some book or such was, only to get the reply " well.... maybe [something someone]... I dunno really.." Even for members of a given school the reading of the previous members' names can be blurry. I asked the author of one book to confirm if my reading for all the soke I had were correct only to get "Well I think it is **** ****, but I don't really know for sure. I just copied the kanji from the densho" There are some good name dictionaries available in Japan for both family and given names, but many of the better only will cost you $100 plus each and still be no guarentee the reading you are looking for will be included or correct for the person in question. Regarding place name readings, your best bet is simply getting a good Japanese atlas as they usually have readings included somewhere so people can look the place they are trying to find up.

Rennis Buchner

fifthchamber
26th January 2002, 13:45
Hi all,
Thanks for the replies here, I had kind of figured that was going to be the answer..Oh well. I guess if even the Japanese themselves can make these errors it will be acceptable for myself to make them on the less obvious Kanji.
I appreciate the help.
Abayo.

bdenison
31st January 2002, 03:27
Ben,

Because of the markedly different linguistic structures of Chinese and Japanese, the Chinese characters were not well suited for writing Japanese. Whereas classical Chinese is basically a monosyllabic language with no inflected words, Japanese is a polysyllabic language with various elements attached to the stems of words to express grammatical meanings.

On and Kun Readings

These circumstances led to an extremely interesting method of writing Japanese: the Chinese characters were used for their meanings. The characters were used to write words of Chinese origin, or to write native Japanese words with Chinese characters representing the same or similar meanings. The grammatical elements continued to be written phonetically, but eventually the characters used for their phonetic values were simplified, giving rise to two sets of syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana, in which each character represents a syllable (Kindaichi). For example, the character ? an, ‘peaceful’ gave rise to the hiragana character ? a, whereas ? was a simplified to the katakana character ? a.

Characters used to represent meaning were pronounced in two ways: (1) the ??? ‘onyomi or ‘phonetic reading’ and (2) the ??? kunyomior ‘explanatory reading.’ This phonetic duality of the Chinese characters is fundamental to the nature of the Japanese script. Let us briefly examine how it arose.

In the first method, which is often called the “Sino-Japanese reading” or “Chinese-derived pronunciation,”the characters represent Chinese-derive words or word elements. This method of reading the characters will be referred to as the on reading. The reading assigned to each character was a rough approximation of the original Chinese pronunciation (Kindaichi). For example, the character ? ‘mountain ‘ was assigned the reading san based on its old Chinese pronunciation (modern Chinese is sh?n). On readings are found more frequently in compound words (e.g. ?? renzan ‘mountain range’) than in independent words (e.g. ? ten ‘heaven’).

Since the Japanese often had native words to express the meanings represented by Chinese characters, they began to associate the characters not only with Chinese words but also with purely Japanese words. ? ‘mountain’, for example, was used to represent the native Japanese word yama ‘mountain’ with no regard to its Chinese-derived reading san. This method of reading the characters is be referred to as the kun reading.

Originally, the kun reading was a kind of explanation assigned to a character that was used to interpret its meaning in a Chinese text. In other words, it was a native Japanese word that was essentially a translation of the concept represented by the Chinese character. Over the years, certain words became so well established as the translation for a given character that they were considered to be the standard reading for that character (Kindaichi). In this manner, ? acquired the reading yama, which eventually became established as its standard accepted pronunciation along with its on reading san.

A distinctive feature of Chinese characters as used in Japanese is their multiple readings. Since the characters entered Japan over different historical periods and originated from different geographical regions, many characters have acquired several on and/or kun readings. In extreme cases, a character may have more than 100 readings (? has over 200).

On and kun readings may be combined in four possible ways: on-on, kun-kun, on-kun, and kun-on. Unfortunately, there is no reliable rule for determining if a character is to be read in the on or kun, or for deciding which of several possible readings to select in a particular instance. A rough guideline is that on-on or kun-kun readings are used in compounds, and kun readings in independent words, but there are many exceptions. For example, ?? maiasa ‘every morning’ is an on-kun compound, though ? has the kun reading goto and ? the on reading ch?.[B]

bdenison
31st January 2002, 03:30
Sorry, the kanji got lost when I posted the message. If after reading my posting you need more information, just let me know and I'll send you the message, with kanji, in PDF format privately.