![]() ![]() Usually, one writes “starfish” as 海星 ( hitode: sea + star), making it the star of the sea. Hitode! I know that word! Here, it means “hand, manpower, another’s hand.” But it also means “starfish,” and it’s a great ateji example that I wrote about in Crazy for Kanji on page 80. ![]() 人手に渡る ( hitode ni wataru: to fall into another’s hands) Taking 手渡す and changing things just a little, we find a completely different expression: Hey, anything look familiar about this name?! Watanabe wa watashi ni ichi-mai no kami o tewatashita. If you change just one hiragana, switching from the noun form 手渡し to the verb form 手渡す, the meaning changes quite a bit: This makes perfect sense with a personal delivery, you’re hand-delivering something. 手渡し ( tewatashi: personal delivery) hand + delivery Here’s a final word with the -watashi suffix: The manager advanced him two weeks’ wages. Shihainin wa nishūkanbun no kyūryō o kare ni maewatashi shita. 前渡し ( maewatashi: advance payment advance delivery) 引き渡し ( hikiwatashi: delivery handing over extradition)Įxtradition of criminals?! That’s some special delivery! The sample sentence uses the verb form 引き渡す ( hikiwatasu: to extradite).Įxtradition frightens me, but here’s a kind of delivery I like: But then the last definition completely changes the tune: And the second definition isn’t too different from the delivery of, say, a package. The first definition of the next word makes it seem as though the word is similar to 受け渡し. 荷渡し ( niwatashi: delivery of freight or goods) 直渡し ( jikawatashi: direct delivery) straight + delivery 受け渡し ( ukewatashi: delivery) to receive + delivery In most, -watashi is a suffix meaning “delivery”: He thought it meant “Me at Yagiri.” But as you may recall from two weeks ago, 矢切の渡し is a ferry crossing the Edo River.Īs it turns out, there are lots of words containing watashi. A native speaker told me he was confused on hearing a hit song called 矢切の渡し (Yagiri No Watashi). Nevertheless, hearing watashi as 渡し sets most of us up for great confusion, because watashi as 私 (I, me) is indelibly imprinted on our brains. 渡 ( TO, wata(ru), wata(su): to cross, extend, cover, range, span to ferry across build across hand over, hand in, transfer) ![]() The watashi ( 渡し) in this word is a perfectly legitimate yomi, given all the ways of reading 渡: The first word, watashibashi, is one of those wonderful Japanese terms with internal rhymes. The し somewhat resembles the top of a bowl, whereas the り looks like upright chopsticks jumping from side dish to side dish and appalling all the Emirii Posutos of Japan.)Īnother Time When One Kana Really Matters … (And that hiragana can serve as a memory trick. Just one hiragana distinguishes one term from the other. 渡り箸 ( wataribashi: using one’s chopsticks to jump from side dish to side dish without pausing to eat rice in between)īoth actions are considered breaches of etiquette. 渡し箸 ( watashibashi: resting one’s chopsticks across the top of one’s bowl) to cross over + chopsticks I’ve discovered two new ways of offending the Japanese: Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary ![]()
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