# Does Kanji=Hanja=Chinese?



## IcemanSK

I saw something yesterday that said, "this says "Budo" in Kanji. I understand that Kanji & Hanja are basically Chinese characters of either Japanese or Korean words. Does that means (in this case) a Korean would say, "Oh, that's our word Mudo," or would they just say, that's the Japanese word Budo?"

What I'm asking is are Kanji & Hanja exactly the same?


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## Xue Sheng

IcemanSK said:


> I saw something yesterday that said, "this says "Budo" in Kanji. I understand that Kanji & Hanja are basically Chinese characters of either Japanese or Korean words. Does that means (in this case) a Korean would say, "Oh, that's our word Mudo," or would they just say, that's the Japanese word Budo?"
> 
> What I'm asking is are Kanji & Hanja exactly the same?


 
There are some Chinese characters that are in Japanese that have the same meaning but a very different pronunciation, not sure about Korean. There was a conscious effort by a Korean ruler of old to make the written language rather different from its origin so I do not know if they share characters or not with China or Japan.


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## cdunn

Plus or minus changes in penmanship, yes, they are identical. The use of Chinese characters as a writing system throughout the region is descendant of the era when China was the major trade partner throughout the general area, much as Latin, and then French, and now English are the 'common' languages of Europe. However, unlike Latin and French, which use phonographic writing systems, the (partly) ideographic nature of the Chinese character means that pronunciation of the character is significantly divorcable from it's meaning. It is therefore possible to read a section of writing in Chinese with no knowledge of any spoken Chinese dialect - hanja and kanji are merely the extreme outliers of this. 

In fact, it is appropriate, through much of history, to describe China itself as unified by the Han Chinese script, rather than the Han Chinese language, or today, Mandarin. Depending on how you classify things, throughout mainland China, there are no less than seven, mutually unintelligable spoken languages, and possibly as many as seventeen. However, they all use the same script. 

Mainland Chinese script, however, will now vary from the archaic script that was the basis of hanja and kanji, due to the simplification of the written language imposed by the PRC government in 1956. Japan also imposed a different simplification routine in 1946 through the shinjitai.  

So, assuming that the character has not been significantly impacted by either of these reforms, it will read the same, indistinguishably, in any language. Others may be specifiable to one governmental area or another.


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## Xue Sheng

cdunn said:


> Mainland Chinese script, however, will now vary from the archaic script that was the basis of hanja and kanji, due to the simplification of the written language imposed by the PRC government in 1956. Japan also imposed a different simplification routine in 1946 through the shinjitai.


 
Very ture.

My wife can read simplified and traditional and has had a few people come to her for translations and the person can be WAY off the mark if all they only know is the simplified Chinese characters when trying to read traditional. And there is still older writing that again can be very different from what is called traditional in China.

History


We also had a friend whose wife is Japanese (from Northern Japan) and her written family name is mispronounced by most Japanese and many Chinese get it wrong too. But it is an old character and the belief is her (my friends wife) family is originally, from way back in history, from China and that is where the character came from. 

But my wife got it in both Chinese and Japanese  and yes I am bragging&#8230; Damn she is smart


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## cdunn

Xue Sheng said:


> There are some Chinese characters that are in Japanese that have the same meaning but a very different pronunciation, not sure about Korean. There was a conscious effort by a Korean ruler of old to make the written language rather different from its origin so I do not know if they share characters or not with China or Japan.


 
This resulted in the Hangul alphabet, the currently preferred writing system in the Koreas, however, some Chinese characters are preserved in modern culture, and, of course, it waxed and waned on politics for many years, so there is a great deal of historical Korean written in the Chinese characters. It is still used, but not as the primary mode.


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## IcemanSK

So, in short, *for example) the Kanji term written "Budo" is also the Hanja term written "Mudo?" Is that what you are saying?


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## cdunn

If it has not been simplified by the Japanese reform, then yes. (Which is, afaik, a pretty restricted character set.)


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## MBuzzy

Yep.  

Particularly for Martial Arts, reading hangul is not enough.  I have a few texts in Hangul and without reading Hanja, they are worthless.  MOST of the technique names are in Hanja.  Oh yeah, and a Hanja - Korean dictionary and punctuation guide is HARD to come by!  You almost need to buy a Chinese->Korean dictionary from Korea.


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## IcemanSK

MBuzzy said:


> Yep.
> 
> Particularly for Martial Arts, reading hangul is not enough.  I have a few texts in Hangul and without reading Hanja, they are worthless.  MOST of the technique names are in Hanja.  Oh yeah, and a Hanja - Korean dictionary and punctuation guide is HARD to come by!  You almost need to buy a Chinese->Korean dictionary from Korea.




Just when I thought I had it figured out. Thanks!:uhyeah:


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## Kuk Sa Nim

IcemanSK said:


> I saw something yesterday that said, "this says "Budo" in Kanji. I understand that Kanji & Hanja are basically Chinese characters of either Japanese or Korean words. Does that means (in this case) a Korean would say, "Oh, that's our word Mudo," or would they just say, that's the Japanese word Budo?"
> 
> What I'm asking is are Kanji & Hanja exactly the same?



This has been answered very thoroughly, and good job everyone. But 2 more cents that I thought you might appreciate: 

Using the exact Chinese characters for "Martial Arts":

Chinese = Wu-shu
Korean = Mu-sul
Japanese = Bu-jitsu

They are not as far apart as you might think.

With respect and brotherhood,
Kuk Sa Nim


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## Carol

It depends on the character.

This is the character for forest.  It is easy to picture this character as a group of trees.  

[SIZE=+4]&#26862;[/SIZE]

The Chinese pronounce this as "shin".  The Japanese pronounce it as "mori".   This character can be pronounced "shin" in Japan, but if it is pronounced "shin", then that character is used to mean something other than a forest (example, someone's name).

Clear as mud?


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## Msby

Kuk Sa Nim said:


> This has been answered very thoroughly, and good job everyone. But 2 more cents that I thought you might appreciate:
> 
> Using the exact Chinese characters for "Martial Arts":
> 
> Chinese = Wu-shu
> Korean = Mu-sul
> Japanese = Bu-jitsu
> 
> They are not as far apart as you might think.
> 
> With respect and brotherhood,
> Kuk Sa Nim



In a similar way I guess, the Korean phrase for "prepare" is joonbi (give or take english spelling) and the Chinese is zhun bei.  &#28310;&#20633;
Tae Kwon Do
Tai Quan Dao- &#36294;&#25331;&#36947;
I started training Tae Kwon Do awhile after starting to learn Chinese, and when we learned "to prepare" I had a mini epiphany in the middle of class! :lol:


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## Chris Parker

Carol said:


> It depends on the character.
> 
> This is the character for forest. It is easy to picture this character as a group of trees.
> 
> [SIZE=+4]&#26862;[/SIZE]
> 
> The Chinese pronounce this as "shin". The Japanese pronounce it as "mori". This character can be pronounced "shin" in Japan, but if it is pronounced "shin", then that character is used to mean something other than a forest (example, someone's name).
> 
> Clear as mud?


 
Toexpand silghtly, within the Japanese written language, almost every character has at least two pronuncations, on'yomi and kun'yomi.

On'yomi are based on the way the Japanese believed the Chinese originally pronounced the characters themselves (to get even more confusing, as the particular characters could be taken from different parts of China over different periods of time, on'yomi could be classed as go-on, kan-on, to-on, or kan'yo-on depending on the region and time, or even a variety of these, giving multiple on'yomi pronunciations!). These are, as said, the way the Japanese thought the Chinese pronounced the words/concepts that the characters represented.

Kun'yomi is the native pronunciation of the concepts behind the characters. This is the original sound/word that the Japanese used to convey a particular idea or concept, the written version then borrowed, or taken from the Chinese written language.

This then gives us the multiple pronunciations, and while one or another may be used to show a slight difference, it is not necessarily that way either. After all, the character itself doesn't change, nor does the actual meaning, although a single character can be used to get across a multitude of concepts. I sometimes think that a primary reason for having the multiple pronunciations is simply to allow the language to clarify itself, as Japanese is only made up of two dozen or so syllables, so the combinations can be a bit limited. 

Think of a syllable like "do". This can mean a number of things, in martial arts, the two most common are "way/path" and "trunk (of the body)", both of which are obviously quite different concepts, and use different characters accordingly. So to clarify, you can talk about "do", and clarify that you are refering to "michi" (path/street/way) or "mi" (body/trunk). Still clear as mud?

Oh, and while I'm here, Kuk Sa Nim, a small thing. The word you were looking for is "jutsu", rather than "jitsu", as they are completely different words. "Jutsu" means "art, practical skill", whereas "jitsu" means "truth". It's similar to writing "pen" when you are asking for a "pan" to cook in.


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## MBuzzy

Kuk Sa Nim said:


> This has been answered very thoroughly, and good job everyone. But 2 more cents that I thought you might appreciate:
> 
> Using the exact Chinese characters for "Martial Arts":
> 
> Chinese = Wu-shu
> Korean = Mu-sul
> Japanese = Bu-jitsu
> 
> They are not as far apart as you might think.
> 
> With respect and brotherhood,
> Kuk Sa Nim


 
Here's the thing....in the business of categorizing languages, asian languages are known as "high context" languages.  English being a very low context language.  What this means is that we use more words and are much more explicit about what we are saying.  Asian languages generally imply and get to points through context clues.  A hard concept to grasp, but for example, Korean has no pronouns....they don't need them because of the way they use context.

So with that in mind, you can't say that there is only one way to say something in an asian language - and we get into the deeper translation issues.

So let's look at this example in depth...
&#27494;&#26415; - as KSN said, this is the chinese way of writing "wushu" quite literally means Martial Art....but in the way that we think of of.  &#27494; means military and &#26415; means discipline or method.  AND, KSN is correct, the way to say this in Japanese is bujutsu and the way to say it in Korean is musul.  (Although technically, musul translates to martial technique -  )

Now here's where it gets fuzzy....You can use other words to describe martial arts.  Which one you use is based on context and the EXACT idea that you are trying to describe.  You can also say &#27494;&#36947; (Japanese "budo"; Korean "mudo"; Chinese "wudao") meaning more closely "Martial Way."  But also used to describe martial arts.  You have certainly heard of Bushido - same basis.  Or Korean stylists have surely heard of mudo.

For Koreans mudo is a more abstract concept than musul.  Musul is the actual technique of martial arts.  The kicks, the punches, the movements.  Mudo is the more philosophical aspect and get closer to the intrinsic meaning.  So they use the term that is needed to get to the exact point that they are trying to make - but again, it is all based on context! 

And honestly, that is why Koreans still use so much Hanja in their writing.  Because sometimes Hangul falls short.  There are concepts that they don't have words that descrive close enough.  English has that all the time!!  Ever run into a situations where there really isn't a word for the concept you're trying to get across, so you explain it in more words or try to use analogies or abstract concepts.  Most likely, the Chinese have a word for it!  That's also why their symbology is so interesting.  You can take two symbols, combine the concepts and make a new word/idea.


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## MBuzzy

Oh!  and for the nerd in me.....as an amateur linguist, if at all possible, please include the hanja/kanji for the concept that we're discussing if at all possible.  I want to learn as much as possible and if there is nothign else that I've learned, it is that when studying Hanja, you have to get into Japanese and Chinese to fully understand it.


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## Chris Parker

MBuzzy said:


> So let's look at this example in depth...
> &#27494;&#26415; - as KSN said, this is the chinese way of writing "wushu" quite literally means Martial Art....but in the way that we think of of. &#27494; means military and &#26415; means discipline or method. AND, KSN is correct, the way to say this in Japanese is bujutsu and the way to say it in Korean is musul. (Although technically, musul translates to martial technique -  )


 
Except for the fact that the Japanese language doesn't use that kanji for jutsu (&#26415, they use &#34899;, the Chinese version being a simplified version, the Japanese being closer to the original taken from the ancient Chinese character.... whew, this is fun, isn't it? As a result, there is no on'yomi reading for the Japanese kanji, kun'yomi only.


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## MBuzzy

Chris Parker said:


> Except for the fact that the Japanese language doesn't use that kanji for jutsu (&#26415, they use &#34899;, the Chinese version being a simplified version, the Japanese being closer to the original taken from the ancient Chinese character.... whew, this is fun, isn't it? As a result, there is no on'yomi reading for the Japanese kanji, kun'yomi only.


 
Boy I wasn't even going to get into traditional vs. simplified.  I just wasn't paying attention!  I'm at work, so I don't have my asian language input deal....so I'm copy pasting from wikipedia of all places.  Koreans use only traditional also, no simplified.


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## Kuk Sa Nim

MBuzzy said:


> Oh!  and for the nerd in me.....as an amateur linguist, if at all possible, please include the hanja/kanji for the concept that we're discussing if at all possible.  I want to learn as much as possible and if there is nothign else that I've learned, it is that when studying Hanja, you have to get into Japanese and Chinese to fully understand it.



Very interesting discussion gentlemen. Quick question, and this might seem dumb...Where do you get the Chinese characters and how do you include  them in these posts?


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## MBuzzy

Kuk Sa Nim said:


> Very interesting discussion gentlemen. Quick question, and this might seem dumb...Where do you get the Chinese characters and how do you include them in these posts?


 
When I'm at work, I usually have pretty good luck finding the ones that I'm looking for on wikipedia.  You can use babelfish, there is also google translate and mdbg.net.  


DISCLAIMER!  Those sites can be dangerous.  If you don't know what you're reading and don't have the experience, you can get yourself confused pretty quickly.  They have traditional and simplified and the translations don't always work how you would like them to.  I'm sure you're aware of that - you can't just drop a phrase into babelfish and expect to actually get a translation.  EITHER way.  It is ok for individual words SOMETIMES, but with asian languages, words do not have mutual exclusivity, so you have to be VERY careful.


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## Msby

Kuk Sa Nim said:


> Very interesting discussion gentlemen. Quick question, and this might seem dumb...Where do you get the Chinese characters and how do you include  them in these posts?


You could install the language pack for Chinese onto your computer which allows you to type in the words phonetically (don't remember the exact process off the top of my head) or try this... http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

this is the website we use in Chinese class


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