So what's your problem with this, then?:
Originally Posted by GlennI agree that it's closer to that (in fact, identical), but kanji are still created with meaningful elements, so it's not entirely non-analogous.Originally Posted by Maciamo
I would argue that 魚 on the left of 京 to make 鯨 has nothing to do with biological classification. In fact, I think that's what I am arguing. Since 魚 (as a radical) has a broad meaning of an animal that lives in water, I don't see the problem with it.
What I should have done is left that out the first two points, as they merely complicated the issue. But then again, I think the point is clear that even if 魚 only meant "fish" at first, it came to have other meanings later, and by the time the Japanese were importing Western words and science, the meaning of "animal that lives in water" was probably firmly in place, so there was no need to change it.
So ネズミ should be translated as "rodent," then. It seems to have more of that meaning anyway. I don't know why it's glossed as "rat; mouse," but then again, I don't know why 夜叉 is glossed as "female devil" either.Originally Posted by Maciamo
Along the same lines, the Japanese gloss of ウミガメ is obviously intended to cover the meaning of "turtle" as "sea turtle" as opposed to "land turtle," which would be a tortoise. To be honest, it looks like the English words are vague in their meaning, as "turtle" can mean anything in Family Testudinidae, or it can mean only some of those belonging to Families Cheloniidae (seven species) and Dermochelyidae (the leatherback), whereas "tortoise" is considered a herbivorous turtle that lives on land. However, it seems that this case is much like the one of ネズミ, in that the gloss is wrong. カメ is the general term "turtle" (not the sea turtle) and everything else is a specific kind of カメ. It seems that "tortoise" would be more appropriately glossed as ゾウガメ.
Without going through all of the クジラ it looks again as though it's just a general name, and that more specific creatures that fall under that category are some kind of クジラ.
From what I have read, skunk aren't even native to Japan, so it's no wonder they'd import the word. ミンク doesn't refer to native Japanese mink, by the way, only American and European ones. The Japanese ones are イタチ.
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