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there's warm and there's warm

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Japanese makes a distinction between a "warm" reception and a "warm" room. They use the same word, but different kanji.

To digress a bit, I'll explain that I'm putting together my own program for improving my Japanese vocabulary. I've found the books I've got better at grammar than at vocabulary, because the vocabulary they teach is selected to support the grammar rather than a core set of vocabulary that you can throw into everyday conversation even if you can't use grammar. Pointing and saying, 「adjective noun」, that sort of thing.

Just now I've come across the different nuances in the use of the word "atatataki" which means warm. In base hiragana it's spelled: あたたかい. To indicate that a room is warm you'd write it with one kanji at the beginning like: 暖かい. To indicate that you've received a warm reception you'd use another kanji: 温かい.

Fine.

But then it gets weird. To indicate that rice is warm you use the "warm reception" kanji. And to indicate that someone is warm-hearted you use the "warm room" kanji.　At this point I have to wonder if the authors the dictionary are just toying with me!

I recently came across an interesting list of languages that ranks different world languages according to learning difficulty for English-speakers. Guess where Japanese ranks?