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Originally Posted by kijakusai
Quote:
Originally Posted by Orochimaru
That's a lot more etymological knowledge than most English speakers have...
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Er―you mean something like 'When a native user of English sees an English word, can he say whether it is derived from Anglo-Saxon or Norman French/Latin'? |
Yeah, that, and also how old it is. I was thinking more recent Japanese words that aren't derived from Chinese wouldn't count as Yamato Kotoba. But of course they would still have their origins in that time...
Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Orochimaru
Do Japanese people tend to know which words predate the introduction of kanji?
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When a native user of Japanese reads a Japanese word and it is not a yamato kotoba, pronunciation-wise the word usually has an 'I'm a descendant of an ancient Chinese dialect' feel.
So usually educated Japanese people can relatively easily detect whether a Japanese word is a yamato kotoba or not.
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Ok. So are all Kunyomi readings Yamato Kotoba? Because it seems to me that kanji is generally used even for words that aren't derived from Chinese...