User Comments - funkfelipe
funkfelipe
Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds
June 15, 2010, 12:31 PM> “云鬼"有什么意思？ 【what does “云鬼" mean ?]
As shanghai_rocks has pointed out above, it is only a single character 魂 (hún; spirit, soul) with 鬼 (guǐ; ghost) signific and 云 (yún; cloud) phonetic components.
> In Japanese 云 is apparently not in the top 2500 kanji
You have to take into account that the Japanese Kanji much more closely match what are called the traditional Chinese characters. While 云 (yún) is a very old character meaning cloud and is now the standard form used among simplified characters in the mainland, it had before been extended by a co-signific 雨 (yú; rain) to the full form 雲 (yún) for the meaning "cloud", which is also used in Japan.
I didn't know it could have the meaning "say", but apparently that use was just a phonetic loan and is rarely used.
Apologies for going further off-topic, but I like discussions about the origin of Chinese characters (字源 zìyuán; "character etymology"?) and think that understanding them can help with recognition and especially memorisation, given that you have enough spare time, that is. I have been inspired and learned a lot by parsing through changye's interesting comments on that topic :-)
Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds
June 15, 2010, 01:59 PMYou're welcome! While I'm at it: I made a typo above, it is 雨 (yǔ; rain) third tone, but I cannot edit that post anymore.