Talk:投獄

Etymology

It's a kango, no doubt - using Chinese components but it's not clear when it was borrowed, possibly coined in Japan as you initially wrote. I think it's currently not used in Chinese and its meaning possibly not immediately understood by Chinese people. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 01:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I was unsure about the Chinese derivation initially as the yomi don't seem to agree -- one is 呉音 and one is 漢音 -- but then there is some overlap between the two anyway, and the word is pretty much identical in Korean, which is often a strong hint that it entered both languages from Chinese. Further Googling about for Chinese-specific string combinations added weight to the idea that it is used in Chinese, though perhaps not in bog-standard 普通話.

• google:"投獄了" -- 35 hits
• google:"投獄的" -- 452 hits
• google:"投獄是" -- 260 hits

Searching for this term using simplified Chinese yields even more:

• google:"投狱了" -- 2,140 hits
• google:"投狱的" -- 4,720 hits
• google:"投狱是" -- 1,450 hits

Sure, it's not tons, but I think this is partly because this might be parsed in Chinese as two words rather than a single term. Related phrasing generates more hits, such as such as 44,700 for google:"投到狱".

If you want to add a qualifier such as "likely" or "probably" to the etyl, I'd be fine with that. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:08, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I've read some links, yes, that's convincing, thanks! As for Korean, I noticed many words are made the Japanese, not the Chinese way, so either they were borrowed from a different version of Chinese (the same that Japanese used) or were borrowed from Japanese. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 03:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, drift in the source language over time (it's been 1,000+ years since many terms were borrowed from Chinese) and the propensity for neologisms in Japanese and back-borrowing into Chinese can make things a bit murky. Add in the fact that most JA dictionary entries don't give etyls, and things get to be even more fun. 8D Come to think on it some more, and yeah, I will add "likely" to the etyl here, just in case. 念のため、さ。 -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:25, 11 April 2012 (UTC)