Is it possible to have pronounciation - meaning match ?

[shadel]

Hello, I'm new to Japanese and I started learning kanjis.
This is a great program you have here and I started using it.
However, like many sites giving kanji there isn't a match between
pronounciations and meanings.
Here, I'll explain with an example, please correct me if something is
wrong.

The kanji that means foot/leg has this description :
foot, leg, to be enough, add, shoe counter
ON : ソク
kun : あし, た.りる, た.る, た.す

As far as I know, た.す only means add, so you can't use it to mean
"foot" or "leg".
In a same way, た.りる can only mean "to be enough".

So my question is as the object field says, can it be done ?
Or am I wrong and there is no need of matching ?

[Alexandre Courbot]

> Hello, I'm new to Japanese and I started learning kanjis.
> This is a great program you have here and I started using it.
> However, like many sites giving kanji there isn't a match between
> pronounciations and meanings.

(note that I am not an expert in Japanese and that what is stated
below only reflects my personal understanding)

I suspect that this association would not be helpful. Indeed, as far
as I understand it a kanji actually carries ONE meaning. The subtility
of that the nuances are not the same in English and in Japanese, so in
order to explain the meaning correctly, one has to use several English
words. Okay, in the case of 足 I agree there is more than one meaning ;
but such a case is rather exceptional to my knowledge. And even, you
have to keep in mind that kanjis were invented in China long, long ago
and then travelled up to Japan - therefore, it is still possible that
concepts that are not correlated to us 21st century humans were
actually relevant back then.

And anyway, the pronunciations and meanings are absolutely not related
- here is an example. To stay with 足, and your example, you mentionned
that 足す (tasu) means to add, and that therefore the "ta" pronunciation
should be associated to "add". I'd object the word 足袋 (tabi), which is
a pair of shoes/socks with splitted toe (足 = foot and 袋 = bag here).

Another example with 不足 (busoku), which means "Insufficiency". Since 不
always means "not", 足 would therefore mean "to be enough" here.
Unfortunately, the "soku" pronunciation is also used in 土足 (dosoku)
which is a word for "shoes". This word is made of 土 (soil) and 足 (...
foot, obviously).

So, I'm afraid you cannot associate pronunciations with meanings,
otherwise there is no doubt lots of other sites would have done it.
Ganbare! ;)

Alex.

[Benoît Cerrina]

Actually I think one can and there are dictionary which do. Basically
for one kanji pronunciation couple a subset of the total number of
meanings for the kanji is valid. The reason why most sites do not show
this is that kanjidic and kanjidic2 do not provide the info. However
Jim Breen explicitly mentions that it will change in the future.

Benoit Cerrina

[shadel]

Thank you for your answer.

It took me a bit of time to understand your first example but I see
your point now.

As for the second, it's true that ソク can be used as "to be enough" as
well as "foot".
But still isn't it misleading when there many meanings and
pronounciations ?
When you want to say "to add", how do you know what to use between た.り
る, た.る, た.す ?
And in the opposite way, for 分 as example, does わ.ける mean "to divide"
or "to understand" ?
This is the main reason why I asked for a matching.

Until now what I did was following instruction from my book by writing
in a side paper a description like this :
足
foot, leg : あし, ソク
to add : た.す
to be enough : た.りる, ソク
to do enough, to fill : た.る, ソク
and I add a tag to the kanji giving the page where the kanji is so
that I can find it again quickly.
As you can see, this matching doesn't contradict with your examples 不足/
土足.
But because of your first example, I should complete with :
foot, leg : あし, ソク, た-

In my study, I use multiple sources of informations, and take what is
common in at least 2 of the sources.
Half of them are french sites but you might want to check them :
- kanjiroushi.net
- www.yosida.com
- www.dictionnaire-japonais.com
- kanji.free.fr

It's the french ones that make a matching, and my book is french too
so maybe this difference comes from the way of studying with french or
english as a base ?

[Alexandre Courbot]

> Actually I think one can and there are dictionary which do.  Basically for
> one kanji pronunciation couple a subset of the total number of meanings for
> the kanji is valid. The reason why most sites do not show this is that
> kanjidic and kanjidic2 do not provide the info. However Jim Breen explicitly
> mentions that it will change in the future.

Interesting. Still a subset of the meanings is not as handy as a
direct one-to-one matching. Especially when meanings overlap over
several pronunciations too. Oh, Japanese is so confusing... :p

Anyway, you provided an information that I forgot to give in my
answer: Tagaini does not make such matching because it is not
available in its sources. That may change in the future, even though I
suspect it to be more confusing than useful...

Alex.

[Alexandre Courbot]

> But still isn't it misleading when there many meanings and
> pronounciations ?

Well, it's not Tagaini that should be fixed then, but the Japanese
language itself! ;)

> When you want to say "to add", how do you know what to use between た.り
> る, た.る, た.す ?

I guess meanings should only be strongly associated to vocabulary, not
kanjis. I use one or several meanings of the kanji as a reminder, but
do not try to remember them all at first. This comes as I study new
vocabulary.

> And in the opposite way, for 分 as example, does わ.ける mean "to divide"
> or "to understand" ?
> This is the main reason why I asked for a matching.

That's the purpose of a dictionary - to remove ambiguities about
words. In French and English, you have the same problem with homonyms
- does "comprendre" mean to understand or to include?

> Until now what I did was following instruction from my book by writing
> in a side paper a description like this :
> 足
> foot, leg : あし, ソク
> to add : た.す
> to be enough : た.りる, ソク
> to do enough, to fill : た.る, ソク

That can be nice as a first-time helper, but I really suggest you
learn complete words along with kanjis (which is almost what you did
there anyway), and do not waste time with pronunciations you may never
need. This is why Tagaini gives a list of words that use a given
kanji. This is just how I study personnally, but I never remember 足 as
being pronunced "ashi" or "soku" or "ta". I remember that 足 is the
"ashi" of 足, the "soku" of 不足 and 土足, the "ta" of 足りる, and so on.
Glueing words and kanjis together (intead of kanjis and
pronunciations) looks more optimal to me as you learn both.

> In my study, I use multiple sources of informations, and take what is
> common in at least 2 of the sources.
> Half of them are french sites but you might want to check them :
> - kanjiroushi.net
> - www.yosida.com
> - www.dictionnaire-japonais.com
> - kanji.free.fr
>
> It's the french ones that make a matching, and my book is french too
> so maybe this difference comes from the way of studying with french or
> english as a base ?

Beware of internet sources (and that includes Tagaini, too ;)). There
are many different ways to study and the optimal one is not the same
for everyone. You should adopt the one that you enjoy and find the
less confusing.

Alex.