Talk:青

Etymology - lower radical is Well or Moon?

My copy of 'Read Japanese Today' (Walsh, Len, Tuttle 1969, reprinted 2002; p.123) says the lower part of the Kanji is 'Moon', and the whole Kanji depicts the Moon rising through foliage. This rather contradicts what is given here. Does anyone have any comment on that? cheers Double Happiness 16:35, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not that familiar with Walsh's work, but glancing through a few sample pages at Google Books for this title, the explanations seem more like something intended to help learners remember the characters easily. The descriptions may not be representative of actual academic research into the origins.

(For instance, Walsh's description of 色 on page 124 does not match any character etymology I've encountered. I've more commonly seen this character referred to as two people engaged in intercourse, rather than Walsh's “peeping tom looking into a window” explanation.)

Walsh aside, the bottom portion of 青 is variously given as 月 (“moon”), a variation on 井 (“well; mine”), or 丹 (“cinnabar (red)”, with a root meaning of “color”), which itself apparently derives from 井. If you compare the seal-script forms of 青 and 丹, versus the seal-script form of 月, the 丹 character does look like the more reasonable graphical match. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Shuowen Jiezi also explains it as 生 + 丹. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:34, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

生=grass?

I removed the mention implying 生 meaning (exactly) grass. As far as my (admittedly limited) knowledge goes this is incorrect. I have tried to confirm this statement using the Wiktionary pages, Google Translate, my own physical copy of a JA-EN/EN-JA dictionary written by Seigo Nakao and an archived version of Animelab.com's Kanji guide and all give 生 not having the actual meaning "grass".

In Japanese (and I believe Chinese as well) 草 is to mean "grass" and while 生 in meaning "to grow" or "growth" seems in some way related to the concept of grass, I believe it shouldn't be stated so oversimplified here, without either a more detailed explanation, or a mention of this definition on the 草 page.

There is at present still a mention of 生 available on this page (growing plants) so the removal of the mention of grass shouldn't leave a gap. Although, I'm wondering if there isn't some confusion between a character depicting something and meaning something. As it stands now this is not clear and left to interpretation of the reader, which in my opinion is hardly desirable. As my understanding is still limited and the source used unknown to me, I will leave this up to a more knowledgeable editor.
OmikronWeapon (talk) 11:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

青 is a common joyo kanji?

How come 青 is a common joyo kanji taught in secondary school, not a Kyoiku kanji taught in Grade 1? Every page with the character classifies it as a joyo kanji, not a Grade 1 Kyoiku kanji! It is wrong! 112.198.77.242 13:33, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• If you find such issues in future, you're welcome to make the change yourself. Please just make sure to explain what you're doing in the "Edit summary" box on the bottom of the editing page.

That said, the 青 entry is already clearly indicated as a Grade 1 kyōiku kanji. What entry are you looking at that doesn't show this? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Nibiko (talk) 00:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Green

@Justinrleung How should we cover this? In Singapore, 青 and 緑 and pretty much interchangeably, though perhaps they are distinct in China and Taiwan. The dog2 (talk) 22:11, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

@The dog2: And to complicate things, 青 is also different in HK Cantonese, where it's more of a light green. It's also hard to know what dictionaries are talking about because they do not include sample pictures of what the actual colour refers to. I don't think we can deal with this using tables, but just with definitions/usage notes. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:27, 4 June 2021 (UTC)