http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=410
Reader Heather has send me a link to today's Questionable Content webcomic by Jeph Jacques. One of the characters, Raven, decides to get a Japanese tattoo, and of course end up with a tongue lashing from others.
公主 = princess
There is also today's "Joe and Monkey" in which Joe says he's learning Chinese:
ReplyDeleteJoe And Monkey
Princess in Japanese (as said in the comic) would be 王女 or 王妃 for a princess in a Western nation. 妃 is used as a suffix to the names of princesses. And 親王 is the term used for princesses in the imperial house of Japan.
ReplyDelete姫 ひめ Hime would be another Japanese term--not in the royal sense, necessarily.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen 公主 before in my life, and neither my electronic dictionary, Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Dictionary, nor Jim Breen's WWWJDic have it. I don't think it really exists.
ReplyDeleteKyle: Try using a Japanese-Japanese dictionary like Kōjien. J-E and E-J dictionaries are horribly limited in comparison.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Asahi.com dictionary, 公主 (pronounced こうしゅ) is the daughter of an emperor. In more than 9 years of studying Japanese I've never seen this word, and it's one of the last words I'd choose to translate "princess."
"Just because it does not exist in my English-Japanese dictionary, this word must not exist."
ReplyDeleteWhat a sad statement...
Yes, the rest of the world only uses English-approved phrases and vocabularies.
I am sure in your so-ever-long-lived 21 years of life, you have mastered the entire Japanese language.
The reality is that you are probably at the same level as a typical Japanese middle school student.
To the anon above: Perhaps Kyle was a bit too quick to claim the word doesn't exist, and his dictionary repertoire could use improvement, but you shouldn't be so quick to judge.
ReplyDeleteI'm the anon above you. I'm 21 and I know more kanji than the average Japanese person. Don't make assumptions about what people do and don't know.
correct character, wrong language. 公主 = princess in Chinese
ReplyDeleteJeph Jacques drew the correct characters but used in a different language on Raven's arm purposely. It was used to illustrate the point.
ReplyDeleteIt may be rare in Japanese, but in Chinese 公主 is the most common word for "princess". Less common is 王妃.
ReplyDeleteIn Chinese:
ReplyDelete公主 = princess (daughter of the ruler)
王妃 = princess (wife of a prince)
In Japanese also, 王女 is the daughter of the ruler, and 王妃 the wife of a prince.
The difference is bloodline, and context.
"I'm the anon above you. I'm 21 and I know more kanji than the average Japanese person. Don't make assumptions about what people do and don't know."
ReplyDeleteout of curiosity, how many kanji does an average Japanese person know?
It depends on what you mean by "know." The easiest way to measure Kanji proficiency is the 漢字検定, on which the average level for Japanese people is about 3. That covers only the 教育漢字, not all of the 常用漢字, but the test covers not just recognition but also knowledge of compounds, multiple readings, 四字熟語, and more, so it's much harder than you might think. You're supposed to be able to pass level 2 after completing high school, but most people can't do it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking strictly from number of individual kanji, the official jouyou kanji, last I knew, were about 2000 in number.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of kanji on the 常用漢字 list that are almost never used, and many that aren't on the list that are very common. Further, there's a lot more to "proficiency" than pure recognition, so just stating the size of the 常用 set doesn't really mean much.
ReplyDeleteAny ideas on what this says?
ReplyDelete[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/swfadd/19abd28a.jpg[/IMG]
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/swfadd/19abd28a.jpg
ReplyDeleteHaving a hard time posting a pic...
Last try ... this link should work.
ReplyDeletehttp://bigdaddycadillac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1754
While 公主 is listed in my 新明解国語辞典, it is defined as a Chinese word, used for daughters of the Chinese emperor.
ReplyDelete