• TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I’m saying it’s the developmental linguistic phenomenon of overgeneralization. Like when a kid calls every animal “doggy”. This isn’t about etymology. It’s about using the Japanese word for something that has no relationship with Japanese. Just because it’s a logograph doesn’t make it kanji, or hanzi for that matter - but hanzi still would be a more appropriate name, since that’s at least what those words in various languages are referring to.

    • lugal
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      2 months ago

      Why do you call it overgeneralization? It’s a generalization or widening of meaning. And it’s the same process that gave us the modern meaning of “dog” (as already explained). How is this not etymology? A word has a meaning (kanjis are logographs inside an otherwise syllable script) and widens it’s meaning (the rest can also be an alphabetic script). It is closer to kanji than to Chinese hanzi because it’s a logograph inside an otherwise non logographic script.