Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 4

= October 4 =

Kanji Pernounciation
I was looking at http://www.learn-japanese.info/firstgradekanji.html to learn some Japanese kanji. I am confused as to why there are so many different ways to pronounce each kanji. Are the ones listed in all capitals the most common ones? Which ones should I study? Am I missing something here or are there really that many ways to say each kanji? Yakeyglee (talk) 04:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Read kanji. It will tell you all you need to know. kwami (talk) 04:53, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The ones listed in all capitals are on'yomi (see Kanji), the ones in all lower cases are kun'yomi (Kanji). --Kusunose 03:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, well, the precious few Kanji I know I memorized learning the words the Kanji is written with.--Radh (talk) 11:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

A question about some interrogative words in English
Look at the following:


 * WHERE ? THERE !
 * WHEREFORE ? THEREFORE !
 * WHENCE ? THENCE !
 * WHITHER ? THITHER !
 * WHEN ? THEN !
 * WHAT ? THAT !

Here's the simple rule: take one of the (six) interrogative words (mentioned above), replace "W" by "T", and get an answer to the question. Let's elaborate on that:


 * WHERE? = which place ? THERE ! = that place !
 * WHEREFORE ? = which reason ? THEREFORE ! = that reason !
 * WHENCE ? = which source (point of departure) ? THENCE ! = that source ( point of departure)  !
 * WHITHER ? = which destination ? THITHER ! = that destination !
 * WHAT ? = which thing ? THAT ! = that thing !
 * WHEN ? = which time ? THEN ! = that time !

Another rule is the following: take one of the first five interrogative words (mentioned above), remove the "W", and get a "closer" answer to the question. Let's elaborate on that:


 * WHERE ? = which place ? HERE ! = this place !
 * WHEREFORE ? = which reason ? HEREFORE ! = this reason !
 * WHENCE ? = which source ( (point of departure) ? HENCE ! = this source ( point of departure) !
 * WHITHER ? = which destination ? HITHER ! = this destination !
 * WHAT ? = which thing ? HAT ! > HET ! > (compare: Dutch) > HIT ! (in OLD English) = IT ! = this thing !

How about the last interrogative word: "WHEN"? And how about other interrogative words, e.g. WHO, WHOSE, WHY? Let's elaborate on that:


 * 1) WHEN: If we remove the "W" from "WHEN", we get the word "HEN". May Old English, or another related (West Germanic) language, have had the word "HEN" as a possible answer (="now!") to the english question "WHEN"?
 * 2) WHO: If we remove the "W" from "WHO", we get the word "HO", which is very similar to "HE". May Old English, or another related (West Germanic) language, have had the word "HO" instead of "HE", or have had the word: "WHE" instead of "WHO"? And how about replacing "W" by "T"?
 * 3) WHOSE: If we remove the "W" from "WHOSE", we get the word "HOSE", which is similar to "HIS". May Old English, or another related (West Germanic) language, have had the word "HOSE" instead of "HIS", or have had the word: "WHIS" instead of "WHOSE"? And how about replacing "W" by "T"?
 * 4) WHY: If we remove the "W" from "WHY", we get the word "HY". May Old English, or another related (West Germanic) language, have had the word "HY" as a possible answer to the english question "WHY"? And how about replacing "W" by "T"?

HOOTmag (talk) 19:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting reading. Ummm, is there a question you want answered in there though? -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 20:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I was wondering the same thing.... r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 20:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, a clear question, on which I've elaborated by four clear sub-questions, from 1 to 4 (see above)! HOOTmag (talk) 20:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying. I now see the five (which have been now reorganised into four) sub-questions (but not the parent question), to which I am afraid I have no answer. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 20:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The parent question is just up above the four sub-questions. HOOTmag (talk) 20:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You've forgotten Whom?, to which the answer could be them or him I suppose. Mikenorton (talk) 21:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I forgot. Thank you for your important comment. HOOTmag (talk) 21:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps answers will lurk within this paper or one or two of the books or papers cited therein. -- Hoary (talk) 22:53, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What is the neuter gender of who (OE hwa), which is why the genitive of both is whose. He and hit > it have a similar relationship; the demonstrative base hi is the source of he, his, him, her, hit/it, hem/em (as in "give 'em hell!"), here, hence, hither. (The is some dispute as to where exactly she came from.) The th- base is retained in the and its neuter conjugation that, pl. those, this, these, etc., but not they, their, them, which are loans from Danish (though I believe ultimately cognate). The hw- base is outlined above. The bases did not all receive the same derivations, at least not as has been recorded, so they do not have exactly parellel forms, but there was a hen alongside then, when until the 15th century, from which hence derives. kwami (talk) 00:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The relationships among these forms date back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE). PIE had an interrogative root *kw-, a pronominal root *e-/*o- which became the basis for the proximal demonstrative in many languages, and a distal demonstrative root *te-/*to-.  These roots took inflexional endings for gender and case.  As Kwamikagami has pointed out, who and what are the remnants of the masculine and neuter nominative forms of the interrogative.  The comparable forms in German would be wer and was.  In Latin, they would be quis and quod.  The related adverbial forms seem typically to be derived from forms of these same roots inflected for case, which were then fossilized.  For example, then may have come from an ablative form that previously meant "thence".  (Thence itself was probably a later formation adding a genitive ending to then.)  Why seems to be derived from an instrumental form of the interrogative.  In some cases, endings applied to one of these roots (e.g., thence) were also applied to the other two (whence, hence). In other cases (e.g., why), this never happened, or else the ending was applied to only one form but not the other (e.g. then -> when, but hen ).  So, to answer each of your questions: 1) No, there was never a form like *hen. 2) Yes, in German, the equivalents of who and he do rhyme  (wer and er).  Similarly, there is the German form der, which means both "the" and "that [masculine] one".  So the English "t-form" of who and he is the.  3)  German has wessen ("whose", interrogative) and dessen ("that one's", or "whose" relative), but is missing *essen, probably because that form was too close to essen, meaning to "eat".  So it is likely that all three forms existed and rhymed in Proto-Germanic. 4)  Why seems to be one of those forms that never had an analog form built on either of the two other roots.  Marco polo (talk) 01:40, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Languages also have their dynamic tendencies to natural flows; characterized by an absence of force or construct. The natural occurrences of such paradigmatic leveling sometimes seems like as if the schema were constructed. The vowels harmonies and analogies are of such examples. From the etymological point of view, such interesting sequences of compositions are therefore simply an analogy based evolution. In morphology, these are very significant in morphosyntactic analyses (though not in morphology). I think an anthropological linguist or a corpus linguist can elaborate this precisely. Nevill Fernando (talk) 16:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I note that the way you have chosen to describe these relationships ('remove the first letter') is playful but not historically illuminating. The series have parallel sets of initial sounds, as others have said; but the fact that 'th' and 'wh' both contain the letter 'h' is a coincidence, as these relationships were set up before there was any writing, never mind Modern English orthography. --ColinFine (talk) 23:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have always been aware of the fact that the "playful" relationship between the "W" and the "T" is just a coincidence. I was just asking about whether such a coincidence may take a place (e.g. in Old English or in any other related West-Germanic language) when "Why" (etc.) is concerned. HOOTmag (talk) 10:17, 9 October 2009 (UTC)