Naming (scientific name)
Until a decade ago, Latin was a compulsory subject at universities in Europe and the United States. There must have been a time when learning Chinese was compulsory in Japan. Latin is equivalent to Japanese Kanji.
Nowadays, there is a wide variety of fields of study, and each field is subdivided, so the situation has changed, but in the past, this knowledge of classical languages was required of all students studying at university. . It is similar to how in Japan a decade ago, a mastery of Chinese learning was a mark of an intellectual. In particular, Latin, coupled with the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, was used not only in the Church but also as a lingua franca of European learning. (P.13)
Ever since Linnaeus, the taxonomic names given to newly discovered plants and animals are still basically Latin (“Secret Names" by Stephen B. Hurd).
Not only in biology, but also in physics, chemistry, and other fields of study, unexpectedly many product names and company names are in Greek or Latin (or are based on them). . The "neo" in "neo~" is the Greek "νέος neos" (in Latin, nevus neus. Its nominative feminine singular is nova. However, it is pronounced noa).
Latin is no longer a compulsory subject even in Western universities, but what do you do when naming things? Somehow, recently, I feel like there are many English words whose endings have been changed to Latin style.
Chinese and Latin
Latin, which originally grew up in peasant culture, received the richness of Greek with its imposing literature. struggled a lot. (P.13)
The fact that intellectuals knew Latin meant that Western scholars could communicate in Latin even if they were from different places and had different mother tongues. It means that Until modern times, academic literature (including the Bible) was written in Latin, so if you knew Latin, you had the potential to conquer the world. Now it seems to be replacing English.
In the East, Sanskrit played a similar role, and in China, Japan, and elsewhere, Chinese played a similar role. But I think there is a big difference between Chinese in Japan and Latin in Europe. That is, Kanji contains many ideograms, whereas the alphabet (Latin) is phonetic. Many of the Chinese characters are phonetic characters, and it seems that the alphabet is also an ideographic character, but the alphabet has almost lost its ideographic character ("A is for ox" (Barry Sanders, "When a book dies, violence is born” A" was the hieroglyph for a bull).
The kanji character '山' is pronounced 'yama' in Japanese and has almost the same meaning. I don't know if people in Beijing pronounce it the same as people in Guangdong, but the meaning is pretty much the same. This is not the case because the alphabet represents sounds (pronunciations) rather than meanings. Although they are both Indo-European languages, individual words and grammar are slightly different.
Indo-European languages (which are mostly broken in English) have feminine, masculine, and neuter genders for nouns (though dog, cat, and mountain should have had genders too). ). And each of them has a case (in Japanese, the noun itself doesn't change by adding "te ni oh" etc.). When Latin incorporates Greek, there are cases where the original Latin vocabulary is used as a "translation", and there are cases where Greek is directly incorporated into Latin.
The same thing happened when translating Sanskrit texts into Chinese. It's phonetic equivalents and translations. How was it when translating that Chinese word into Japanese? I think that there were more difficulties than translating Greek into Latin, and more than translating Sanskrit into Kanji. Language is culture. Common nouns when there is the same thing are not so much of a problem. Mountains and rivers are fine. Therefore, even if kanji is introduced, the reading remains the same as the Yamato language. However, the reading of Yamato-kotoba cannot be applied to things that are not in Japan or abstract nouns that are not in the culture. Neos should be Neus. However, if there were no "yama" in Japan, "mountain" would have been called "san," and I think it would be difficult to imagine a "mountain" when someone said "san." When I hear the word "giraffe", I think of "giraffe in a zoo" rather than "kirin". There were big changes in Japan when Buddhism was introduced and when Western culture was introduced around the time of the Meiji Restoration. Foreign languages that cannot be digested (that is, do not become Yamato-kotoba or Japanese) have left their daily lives and taken a different path as academic terms. It's used by the upper and privileged classes, in a society where it's classy and cool, but few people know what it means.
For the last fifty years or so, translation has given up on using kanji. At first, I only used academic terms, but recently I have begun to use English as is, even for economic terms and political terms. How many people know the meaning of harassment and compliance and use them? If you say "legal compliance", I feel like I understand it somehow, but I can't read "compliance" (laughs). )” is different.
Academic Terms and Daily Words
Neo, Neus, or New, but academic terms in the West are extensions of everyday words. Tetsuji Atsuji says that even people who have never seen an anemometer can understand the meaning of it in kanji, but that people who do not know the Greek word ἄνεμος (wind) cannot understand the meaning of anemometer. I was. However, since anemo is the origin of the word animal, Westerners may be able to understand the atmosphere. I think that animals are not animals because they move, but that God has given them anemo (wind). Then you will understand the meaning of God and angels breathing in Western paintings. Whether this is correct or not, I think it has been a tradition in Western Europe since ancient Greece to add academic meaning to words used in everyday life. They have both traditional meanings and new meanings.
The Japanese academic world also followed the tradition of translating Sanskrit into Chinese. That is, if it is a Chinese word, it will be taken in as it is, if it corresponds to the alphabet, use it if there is a vocabulary similar to that in the old Chinese language, and if there is not, create it as an idiom in kanji. All of them represent the meaning of the kanji, or they overlap the meaning to express a new meaning. But I think it's completely different to express the alphabet in katakana as it is.
Originally, academic terms in Chinese were separate from everyday language. It belonged to the privileged class, but I think that "translating" still involved being understood. However, "compliance" is not that kind of standard, and "refusing to be understood" and "privileged arrogance and superiority" can be seen frankly. Based on my compliance, even if I suffer a disadvantage, get caught, or be punished, I have no way to argue back (laughs).
Comparative Linguistics
The author is said to be a leading comparative linguist. Comparative linguistics is rather temporal, such as comparing languages of the same language family, such as Latin, Greek, and German, and finding similarities (and differences) to find the "original protolanguage."・It is a historical study. Contrastive linguistics, on the other hand, is a study that attempts to find out ``what is language and the essence of language'' by comparing various current languages.
Both of them are looking for "same" and "different", but comparative linguistics emphasizes "different" on the premise of "same", and contrastive linguistics I think that the emphasis is on "same" on the premise of "different". But "same" presupposes "different" and "different" presupposes "same".
This "different" and "same" is the basis of taxonomy. Taxonomy is about finding and separating things that are different, and finding and collecting things that are the same. This sounds easy but is difficult. When files accumulate on the hard disk, it is difficult to find the necessary files, so create folders and classify them. In terms of SNS, it is "tagged". I create a certain amount of folders and put them in there, but files that do not belong to any folder appear. I have no choice but to create a new folder. The number of folders keeps increasing. Then there is no point in creating a folder, so you will have no choice but to create a "Other" folder. This is bad. The number of files in "Other Folders" will increase and it will get out of control. I know this from experience, so I try not to create "Other folders", but if I do that, I end up putting files that I think are "a little different" into "Existing folders". Later, I wonder, "Why did I put it here?" (laughs).
The reason why this happens is simple. This is because the file was not created to classify them. Therefore, you should decide the classification (number) when you create the file. But animals, minerals, and languages weren't made to be classified.
"Understanding"
As you can see from the Japanese word ``understanding'', which means ``to understand'', the word ``understand'' means ``divide''. There is a theory that it comes from (the grounds cannot be specified). I don't know who translated it, but ``understand'' also means ``understand (divide) with reason.'' meaning).
You cannot classify things that are not the same. "Andromeda Nebula" and "God" cannot be classified. Dogs and cats share some similarities, so you can classify them according to their differences. Cats can also be classified and distinguished by the differences between calico cats and American shorthairs. That's how I get to know my cat by classifying and finding differences. If you say, "My cat isn't friendly," you can say that because there are cats that aren't friendly. Having an unfriendly "bear" doesn't help you "know" your cat.
But my neighbor's cat is different from my cat, just as a bear is different from a cat. Then how is it possible to classify them as cats (or animals)? The me of yesterday and the me of today are different. The clothes are different, the weight is different, the mood is different. The substances that make up the body are also different. How can you say that you are still the same 'I'? Being the same regardless of the passage of time (or rather, because of the existence of time) is the "self-identity (principle)."
"Same" and "different" are principles that complement each other, even though they are opposed to each other. Without one, there is no other. However, there seems to be a cultural difference in which one is emphasized. I feel that Western culture puts a lot of emphasis on that sameness. The reason for this is that, first of all, it is a culture that values the identity of the “I,” that is, the “subject.” Anything other than is treated as "something different from me" or "object". Only by treating it as an object is it possible for me to be the same as myself. But "I am the same as myself" is no basis for anything. So I am very worried. Therefore, I endlessly enumerate “I am” and “I am not”, and search for “others within me”. But you can't define me even if you enumerate endlessly. There is no ``I'' as a definer.
What exists cannot be defined, not just the ``I''. Neither my cat nor this apple can be defined. Therefore, I feel that the last method is to bring up "existence (things that exist)" as a limited existence, but I feel that it is also a replacement of the problem. To make an infinite list of things that define beings is to say that beings cannot be defined. The fact that I think I can do it someday is just the flip side of wanting to define ``I'' by it ('What am I?' 'Reason d'Etre').
I cannot say that such a "culture of the subject (ego culture)" should not exist or should exist. Because it is one of existence. However, that culture is centered on me, and treats other people, other countries, and other cultures as different from ``me'' and ``us''. It is only natural that the important thing is . The way we look at others becomes sympathy, pity, and ethics. There, "(neighbor) love" and "volunteerism" are shouted. But they are as long as "own will" and "independence" are respected. At the very least, it is unacceptable that "coercion" hinders "independence". Conversely, if you don't throw yourself away, it's a culture that allows competition and struggle (that's why freedom and equality are necessary).
In competition and struggle for equality, the "strong" almost always wins. The individual is responsible for winning or losing. To be equal, and to be free, means that all responsibility rests with the "individual" who "has the right to decide". "If I didn't win, I lost." Don't settle for today. has the possibility of losing tomorrow. For tomorrow, today must be stronger than yesterday. Tomorrow we need to be stronger than today. And I'm sure the "strong ones" will win tomorrow as well.
The ``I'' who is always anxious is the ``I'' who is infinitely unsatisfied. The fragmentation to know knows no bounds. There should be no limits. Similarly, knowledge is accumulated as things. infinitely accumulated. The future will appear as more fragmented and accumulated. The future must be more accumulated, the present is always 'unfinished'. The past is only the overcome present. New things are sought, and old things (including old people) are only imperfections that can be overcome.
Japan is becoming such a society. That's how society has been for at least 50 years. All cultures can be like that. There are people like that in every culture. However, I think that such people and that kind of culture are "a society that is difficult to live in." Especially from the beginning (from birth), the "weak 'I'" has little chance of winning. I think so because I have become an old person (old man) who can get over it.