Click the image below to go to the article from which I draw these examples from:
ヨジジュクゴとは？
Kanji can be an intimidating part of Japanese. I think it is a big reason why a lot of people give up on Japanese. If you can’t consume the written word of a language easily, that makes it hard to get a lot of immersion done compared to other languages.
I’ve talked about general kanji study tips and tricks on youtube here, here and here. I’ve also done previous blogs here and here. Today I’d like to focus on 四字熟語 【よじじゅくご】 (n) four-character compound word (esp. idiomatic). While ‘true’ 四字熟語 are idiomatic, their usage in Japanese goes much broader than in Chinese, which is where the concept comes from. The wikipedia entry is an adequate primer for the topic and I would recommend you read it if you’re unsure as to what a 四字熟語 is. The entry points out that, ‘四字熟語 is itself a non-idiomatic four-character phrase’.
So how does getting into more complicated kanji topics like this help you, the average JSL learner? I would propose 3 reasons
- They are ubiquitous in Japanese
- The non-idiomatic ones are easy to understand through literal breakdowns of the individual kanji
- Attempting to read 四字熟語 helps you practice ‘kanji logic’, that is how do 漢語 (かんご) work.
So let’s go through the above linked article about train seats and look through all the 漢語 with particular focus on the 四字熟語.
行動習慣 does not have a separate entry into the dictionary, normally a hint that it is a non-idiomatic 四字熟語. I would point out that such a 四字熟語 is the combination of two words
- 行動【こうどう】 (n,vs,adj-no) action; conduct; behaviour
- 習慣 【しゅうかん】 (n) (1) habit; (n) (2) (social) custom; practice; convention
So it could be translated along the lines of behavioural conduct, societal conduct. This article is talking about certain strategies or behaviours that should be done to avoid aging quickly. So one strategy that I find to be successful when you see four kanji in a row, is to put the four characters into two pairs as I did in the above bullet points.
一念発起【いちねんほっき】 (n,vs) (yoji) being resolved to (do something); having a wholehearted intention
Unlike the previous entry, this is actually in the dictionary, but it still can be looked at as 一念+発起. This one actually is quite tricky as 発起 can be read as ほっき or はっき but 四字熟語 often are only allowed to be read in one way and in this case it must be ほっき and comes from a particular sect of Buddhism.
体脂肪率 【たいしぼうりつ】 (n) body fat percentage. This is a slight variation on what we have been looking at in the sense that it is a 三字熟語, or a 3 character phrase with the kanji 率, which tends to be used as a suffix to talk about rate, ratio, percentage etc.
血管年齢 is back to the more common style of adding two 漢語 together, けっかん (blood vessels) and ねんれい (age). It could be translated to something like ‘the age of the blood’ vessels, straight after it in the article it puts 28歳, meaning ‘blood vessels aged 28’ or something similar.
限定書籍 is another, with げんてい meaning: (n,vs,adj-no) limit; restriction and 書籍 しょせき (n) book; publication.
While doing my research about this one, I came across a new English word called a retronym. Not knowing what it was, I did what I always do first and have a guess at etymological clues in the word, principally being ‘retro’. This isn’t too far off the meaning of the word but my point is that this is exactly what you should be doing when you’re looking at kanji! Indeed it is basically the whole point of this blog today.
内臓脂肪 is another example of the Lego-like way that you can join 漢語 to one another, with 内臓 being in place of 体, therefore being read as ないぞうしぼう and meaning visceral fat (although in my head I just thought of ‘organ fat’) and is technically excess intra-abdominal adipose tissue accumulation. Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be saying today.
The last entry is (we’re still in the first paragraph of the actual article) 特別公開
- 特別 とくべつ (adj-na,adj-no,adv,n) special; particular; extraordinary; exceptional; especial
- 公開 こうかい (n,vs,adj-no) opening to the public; making available to the public; putting on display; exhibiting; showing (play, movie, etc.); holding (interview, etc.); open; public.
In other words, a ‘special opening’, ‘special event’.
Takeaway
The takeaway I hope you get from this article is to see the importance of learning how to read 四字熟語 and 三字熟語. Most of the examples I gave (6 out of 7) were basically just two 漢語 together, the 7th being a 三字熟語 with a suffix. 一念発起 is perhaps considered as one set phrase but it is totally possible to break it down into two components hence why I put it in the first category.
