For example, " south-southwest" would be nan-nansei 南南西, while " west-southwest" would be sei-nansei 西南西. The secondary intercardinal directions are made by repeating one morpheme. Likewise, sei 西 means "west," even if sei isn't a stand-alone word.įrom there, someone combined these meaningful non-words to form hokusei 北西, which means north plus west, "northwest."īy the way, meaningful word-parts are technically called " morphemes." North and west are morphemes of the word northwest, just like hoku and sei are morphemes of the word hokusei. That is: hoku means "north," even if hoku isn't a word. This means that hoku isn't a Japanese word, it's merely a way that kanji was read.īut if hoku is a reading of a kanji, and that kanji has a meaning, that means that, consequently, hoku inherits the meaning of the kanji. So kita is a kun'yomi of 北, while hoku is an on'yomi of 北, because kita existed before the kanji was imported, while hoku is loosely based on how the kanji was read in China hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Meanwhile, the ways that kanji was read in China before it was imported into Japan are called on'yomi readings. When a native Japanese word gets written with kanji, that word is said to have the kun'yomi reading of the kanji. When Japan imported the kanji from China, they saw that 北 meant "north," so they started writing the word kita with that kanji, as kita 北. Long version: it's probably because Japan had a word for "north" that was kita.
Short version: it's because the word is hokusei, not kita-nishi. Why is "northwest" in Japanese hokusei 北西 and not kita-nishi 北西? Hey! What's going on here?! We just mixed the kanji characters of the cardinal directions together, but now the kanji are read totally differently! Next we have the intercardinal directions, which mix the cardinal directions together. Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest There's a secret playground or something like that. Minami ni yon-po higashi ni yon-po no tokoro ga Context: Alex talks about what he heard from the children.Game: Dragon Quest IV, Doragon Kuesto Foo ドラゴンクエストＩＶ
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