At a friend’s home tonight, I had a homemade dinner combined with a spontaneous private lesson in Japanese Kanji (Chinese characters).
The lesson was mostly about fish and how, even though the pronunciation is different for different fish, they all have the same first character in their name: fish, sakana ι π.
What was extra fun about it is that some of them actually helped me learn what on Earth the fish actually are.
For example, saba ι― is the word for mackerel.
It is a combination of fish and blue.
Aka “blue fish”.
Did you know that mackerel have blue all on their backs?
I do now. π
It was definitely a fun lesson, and it all started with her showing me the kanji for shark, and my saying that it looks like a shark on the right and a fish on the left.
(It really does!)
And then she got all into how “fish” is in the kanji of all the little fish dude names.
It turns out that shark is made up of “fish” and “crossing” (and not something like “fish” and “monster”, like I was imagining).
I guess it makes sense: the thing that crosses fish…
But “crossing” still totally looks like a shark to me.
Post-a-day 2019
