Waxin’ Lyrical

Good day and welcome to xeph’s interesting kanji corner!

The interesting kanji I have for you today is…

the kanji 頁!

…ever wonder why xeph isn’t a gameshow host? No?

This is interesting because of how it is read. Chinese speakers who pick up Japanese (like yours truly) generally have some associations with how certain Chinese words or sounds carry over to Japanese (although their reading depends on the time period, generally, where the word was introduced in Japan), and a few general patterns can be observed. However this one is a very interesting exception.

In Chinese, this is read “ye4″. Now “ye” is also interesting, because it’s one of the sounds that I cannot make guesses to regarding how it is read in Japanese, considering the wide number of sounds Chinese “ye” may have in Japanese. As a result I have no idea how to guess this kanji, but still, I expected it to be a native Japanese word or a Sino-Japanese one…

Boy was I wrong on all accounts! So how is this word read, you ask?

It’s read
ぺいじ (peiji)

That’s right folks, PAGE. The kanji takes its English counterpart’s reading!

And that’s all for today’s interesting kanji corner!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 am and is filed under Journal Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.