This paper discusses that there are some Japanese-and-Chinese orthographically similar words in which native Chinese speakers learning Japanese (henceforth "NCS") are able to comprehend the meaning but which are not used in modern Chinese. These types of words are often treated and classified in as both orthographically- and semantically-similar words, which might be misleading. The usage of such words is recognized in either premodern or classical Chinese text, however, there is little or no usage in today's modern Chinese. Those kanji words or characters, however, can be seen as part of compound words or in formal or literature text, which makes it possible for NCS, in general, to become exposed and familiar with the classical usage of those words or characters. NCS, however, at the same time need to make a concerted effort to learn the Japanese words tied to the Chinese equivalent used in modem Chinese.
This paper will aim to analyze Japanese-and-Chinese orthographically-similar words of this type stated above (namely, Carefully Transferable (CT) - other Words) which are sorted and found as part of CT Words in the classification of the Old Japanese Proficiency Test Level 4 nouns (Komuro-Lee 2015) and classifies them into four different types as described below.
Type A (eg. fA): There is no Japanese orthographically-similar word for the Chinese word
(-lf ..l) which semantically corresponds to the target Japanese word( ).
Type B (eg. ): There is a Japanese orthographically-similar word (inIB) for the Chinese word (i'.I) which semantically corresponds to the target Japanese word ( ), and the Japanese orthographically-similar word OrI13) has a meaning similar to the target Japanese word(s).
Type C (eg. p]r): There is a Japanese orthographically-similar word (:tlhJi) for the Chinese word (:1:-!J!,:ff) which semantically corresponds to the target Japanese word (Br), however, the Japanese orthographically-similar word (±-tl?,Ji) has a meaning different from the target Japanese word (Bf).
Type D (eg. ffi): There is a Japanese orthographically-similar word Of) for the Chinese
word Of) which semantically corresponds to the target Japanese word (ffi), however, the Japanese orthographically-similar word (!,f) has a meaning different from both the target Japanese word (ffi) and its Chinese equivalent (Jf).
The analysis presents results that CT-other Words characterized with one kanji comprises 66% of the CT Words spelled with one kanji and are spread out to all four types while CT-other Words characterized with more than one kanji comprises 33% of the CT Words spelled with more than one kanji and all, except one word, is classified to Type A.
1The word translated and used for 13 tp [RJ%1Jll' in this paper is based on the word "Japanese and-Chinese orthographically-similar two-kanji compound word" which is used in Xiong and Tamaoka (2014).
The abstract above is courtesy of the Society for the Study of Japanese Language and Culture.