whale > crocs and sharks

[Joel Bradshaw]

Fellow word sharks,

I happen to have a Japanese kanji dictionary at/to hand, so I'll chime in to
check Danny's impressions. The Spahn and Hadamitzky Japanese character
dictionary lists three characters for 'shark':

[Caps indicate Chinese reading, lowercase indicates native reading]
[11a is the range for kanji with the 'fish' radical/semantic]

11a6.5 KOO, same 'shark'
[Chinese jiao1 'shark';
more common is sha1(yu2) 'shark (fish)']

samegawa 'sharkskin'
samehada 'fishskin, dry/scaly skin'
[2 different characters for native reading hada]

CHOOzame 'sturgeon' [lit. 'butterfly shark']
CHOOzame 'sturgeon' [first char otherwise read JIN]
nokogirizame 'sawfish' [lit. 'saw-cut-shark']
wanizame 'shark'

11a9.5 GAKU, wani 'crocodile, alligator'
[Chinese e4(yu2) 'crocodile, alligator (fish)']

waniguchi 'wide/large mouth; alligator (clip); (temple) gong'
wanigawa 'alligator skin'
waniashi 'frog-footed, pigeon-toed, bowlegged, knock-kneed'
wanizame 'shark'

sotowani 'walking with the feet pointing outward, frog-footed'
["slew-footed" (or slue-footed) in my dialect]

11a15.1 SHOO, fuka 'shark' [no compounds]
[not found in my Chinese dictionaries]

Jp. wani sure sounds like a croc to me.
Joel
--
Joel Bradshaw <bradshaw at hawaii.edu>
Journals Manager, University of Hawai'i Press
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