掲示板 Forums - The many forms of 「かえる」

So I've been looking at these many different ways to write 「かえる」 (the "return" meaning). This is what I've got so far from looking at various sources; the Japanese definitions are from Yahoo: [b][size=14pt]「帰る」[/size][/b]　＝　to return home, to the hotel, to a home country, or otherwise a return to a place of origin; 「初めにいた所、またはもといた場所にもどる」 [b][size=14pt]「歸る」[/size][/b]　＝　WWWJDIC lists this as an obsolete writing, and I can't easily find any uses of it on the Web. I believe that this was the Traditional Chinese character that got simplified into 「帰」 by the Japanese. Note that the Simplified Chinese character is now 「归」 [b][size=14pt]「返る」[/size][/b]　＝　seems to be used mostly with objects returning to their places of origin, for instance library books or borrowed money, but also with intangibles like favors or kindness; 「物が本来の持ち主に戻る」 [b][size=14pt]「還る」[/size][/b]　＝　This one isn't listed as obsolete, and I see it being used online, in fact it is listed right next to 「帰る」 in the same entry in all of the online 国語辞書, so it seems that they have exactly the same meaning. I get the feeling, however, that it is on its way to being obsolete. Looking at the definition for the phrase 「行き帰る」, I see listed beside it 「往き還る」, which has the same meaning. 「往く」 is an outdated way to write 「行く」, so perhaps this second form is an older way to write this phrase. If true, this would seem to indicate that 「還る」 is in the process of fading out in favor of 「帰る」.　Also a Traditional Chinese character, it has been simplified to 「还」　in that language. [b][size=14pt]「反る」[/size][/b]　＝　This form is what prompted me to do this investigation. I saw it as a vocabulary word that uses this kanji when I encountered it on a kanji quiz. Interestingly, you can't get this form to appear using IME by typing 「かえる」; I have to type 「そる」　to get it to parse to this form. But, Rikaichan does show 「かえる」 as a reading of it (albeit underneath 「そる」). Actually, Rikaichan lists 「反る」　and 「返る」　together under 「かえる」　possibilities, as if they are identical in meaning. 「反る」 is not listed at all in my paper dictionaries; Wiktionary gives the meaning as [to turn over] but gives no additional information; Yahoo lists 「返る」　and 「反る」 together in a similar fashion as 「帰る」・「還る」. Does this mean that 「反る」　is obsolete - or on its way out the door, at least? If that's true, then I wonder what the reason was for "un-simplifying" it by adding a radical? Maybe it was an attempt to separate the "return" meanings from the many "reverse/opposite/anti" meanings that the kanji 「反」 already possessed (and thus from confusion with verbs such as 「そる」)? At any rate, should we still consider 「反る」 a modern reading of 「かえる」? It seems to have at least one foot in the grave.

Right, I mean there's no doubt that 「返」 is preferred in both the transitive and intransitive verb forms - I didn't even know that 「反る・反す」 could be read as 「かえる・かえす」 until I saw the word on the related vocab list in a kanji quiz. What I'm wondering is: what is the purpose of 「反る・かえる」 if everyone almost universally uses 「返る・かえる」 in modern Japanese? Furthermore, what is the historical relationship between the two forms? Looking here, I just had an idea: [IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/15qclle.png[/IMG] Of course, the difference between these two kanji is the 之繞 radical: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E2%BB%8C And we know that this radical can carry with it ideas of "walking" or "advancing forward." Since 「反」　can mean opposite, perhaps adding the 之繞 radical to it gave the character the feeling of literally "walking to the opposite," which could in some ways be seen as "returning" to the other side, so to speak.　I mean, the kanji 「反」 itself already has some ideas of "returning" in it, as can be seen in words like 「反響」 and 「反撃」. But adding this radical may have given the kanji the "legs" it needed to fully satisfy the desired meaning of "to return (something)". So if this hypothesis is even somewhat accurate, it is easy for me to see how the 「返る・かえる」 spelling came to be. But, this doesn't explain the current limbo status of 「反る・かえる」. Was this the original version of 「返る」, before the latter was created through adding the advance radical? I believe this may be what happened. That then begs the question though: is there a reason to use the 「かえる」 reading of 「反る」 at all? It seems that the modern 「返る」 already performs all of the functions of this "return" meaning, and I can't see a reason to use 「反る」 for 「かえる」 at all (and apparently, neither does IME).

Well, I broke down and wrote a Lang-8 entry asking people to write the first verb that comes to mind when they see 「反る」, and I got ton of useful information from the responses. First, the statistics: out of 15 responses, 13 people said that 「そる」 was the first verb that they thought of, while only 2 people thought of the 「かえる」 reading. Some of the responses were extraordinarily interesting. I will copy-paste some of them here for your viewing pleasure, along with my poor attempt at a translation: [quote]「かえる」という読みも小説か何かで見たような気もしますが、「そる」としか読まないと思います。 I feel like I've seen the 「かえる」 reading in books before, but I only read it as 「そる」。 [/quote] [quote]「もどる(戻る)」とか「かえる(帰る)」という動詞が頭に浮かびました。 Verbs like 「もどる」 and 「かえる」 popped into my head.[/quote] [quote] 「反る」の読み方は「そる」なのですが、これを読んで、まず頭に浮かぶ動詞は、「そりかえる」とか、「のけぞる」とかですね。 The way that I read 「反る」 is 「そる」, but when I read it the first verbs I thought of were ones like 「そりかえる」 and 「のけぞる」.[/quote] [quote]「（かえる）？　いや、（そる）だよなー、やっぱり・・・」とおもいました。 I thought, "「かえる」? Nah, really it's 「そる」 after all, isn't it..."[/quote] [quote]なぜか、頭にパット｢戻る。」のイメージが浮かび上がってきました。辞書をみると「もどる。｣とは読みませんね。基本的な私の漢字の知識も疑わしいものです。 For some reason, the image of 「戻る」 flashed instantly into my mind. Though when I looked in the dictionary, 「もどる」 isn't listed there. It seems that even my basic knowledge of kanji can't be trusted. [/quote] [quote]どうしても２通りの読みが想起される。「そる」と「かえる」。 あと頻度で言うと「反る」は「そる」と読む場合（人）が多いと思う。「かえる」という読みは、今の日常語ではまれにしか出会わないと思う。 Ultimately, two ways to read it come to mind: 「そる」　and 「かえる」. Still, many people are going to read 「反る」 as 「そる」. As for the 「かえる」 reading, it's seldom encountered in everyday modern Japanese.[/quote] As you can see, the results are for the most part as expected, with the bulk of people associating 「反る」 with the 「そる」 reading. However, I was a little surprised to see that there were several people who still associate the word with ideas of "returning." I should note that the woman who quickly thought of 「戻る」 is elderly, which makes me wonder if members of her generation would be more likely to make this "return" association for the word 「反る」. It's certainly an intriguing possibility. Finally, I'd like to share this section of text extracted from a kotobank.jp page that someone on Lang-8 showed me: [code]大辞林 第三版の解説 ［表記］かえる （ 返 ・反▽ ・帰 ・孵▼ ） 「返る」は“物がもとに戻る。もとの状態に戻る”の意。「貸した本が返る」「童心に返る」「我に返る」「あきれ返る」 「反る」は“向きが逆になる”の意。「返る」とも書く。「葉が裏に反る」「軍配が反る」 「帰る」は“もとの所にもどる”の意。「還る」とも書く。「家に帰る」「故国に帰る」 「孵る」は“卵がひなになる”の意。「卵が孵った」「ひなが孵る」[/code] http://kotobank.jp/word/%E8%BF%94%E3%82%8B%E3%83%BB%E5%8F%8D%E3%82%8B Here we have some fairly concrete evidence (Daijirin is a pretty authoritative source) of how to approach the 「かえる」 reading of 「反る」. As mentioned in a previous post, this reading is used for ideas of "turning over" or "flipping over," although as the explanation notes 「返る」 can also be used for this purpose. It would appear that which form to use for this meaning is at this time essentially a stylistic choice. Judging by the number of people who read 「反る」 as 「そる」, though, perhaps it is best to steer away from 「かえる」 readings of 「反る」 altogether, and instead use 「返る」. While the intended meaning can almost always be deduced from context, sometimes for the sake of clarity and ease of reading one choice can be slightly preferred over the other (just as in English writing).

角 also has a third reading: つの (or 'horn,' as in on an animal's head) ;)

it can also be すみ as in 'corner' too, forgot! :o