Kanji of Eternity or Eternal

[masaegu]

Originally Posted by ryuurui

@masaegu Have you ever heard of poetry?

Don't get carried away. What is the point of discussing this on THAT kinda level with someone whose current level of Japanese is the following?

Originally Posted by Alaks

arigato!

[ryuurui]

Oh, I didn't look at it from this perspective. I was linguistically blinded lol

[Pogopuschel]

Now I understand what you mean ryuurui. I think almost all Kanji can be used as as standalone words/meanings words when it comes to poetry or art. I was just saying that I haven't seen it in an everyday context :)

[ryuurui]

Well, poetry is one example, but another is the jungle of 熟語. For instance the idiom 一労永逸. Since 永逸 is not a word, it means that 永 has a stand alone meaning as "eternity", although, to be more precise, in this case 永 stands for "a very long time". (一労永逸 could be roughly translated as "hardship will ensure extended benefit"). And I do know that many 熟語 were in fact classical poetry verses.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by ryuurui

Well, poetry is one example, but another is the jungle of 熟語. For instance the idiom 一労永逸. Since 永逸 is not a word, it means that 永 has a stand alone meaning as "eternity", although, to be more precise, in this case 永 stands for "a very long time". (一労永逸 could be roughly translated as "hardship will ensure extended benefit"). And I do know that many 熟語 were in fact classical poetry verses.

In the alternative, you could say the ４字熟語 is a single word expressing a very complex concept!

[ryuurui]

I suppose we could. I think this is why I find kanji so fascinating. You cannot simply define them, and there is always another layer hidden somewhere behind the strokes.

[KyleGoetz]

It's primarily hard because the concept of a "word" is pretty defined in English as something like "aggregation of pronounceable letters that contains no spaces." "Word" is a term for languages with spaces in it.

This is why linguists have terms like morpheme, grapheme, etc.