Japanese symbol for FAMILY

[trojanpunk]

My girlfriend is looking for the symbol that represents family. any help??

[Keeni84]

Do you mean something like

家族
かぞく
ｋazoku

It means "family".

[trojanpunk]

i don't know anything about the japanese language or its symbols unfortunately. i told her i would do some research and i figured this site would be of help. i wasn't mistaken

thanks for the information. if there is more to it let me know. your help is appreciated.

[Keiichi]

And to make it more readable: 家族

[trojanpunk]

Keeni84 - what's the difference between the two sets of symbols. i'm told the top one (and the one Keiichi is referring to) is Chinese, but since i don't know either language i'm obviously ignorant about it. thanks again for the help

[kirei_na_me]

Top line is Kanji(Chinese characters), second line is Hiragana(pronunciation characters).

[yimija]

Originally Posted by trojanpunk

Keeni84 - what's the difference between the two sets of symbols. i'm told the top one (and the one Keiichi is referring to) is Chinese, but since i don't know either language i'm obviously ignorant about it. thanks again for the help

At the beginning, japanese (yamato kotoba) was a non written language.
all communication would be established by words. If one had to make a communication to someone, he/she would hire the services of a messenger (Kataribe).

On or about 3rd century (after JC) a man called Wani arrived in Japan from Korea. He had with him a written collection of Confucius and a "Senjimon" which is a book intended to do one's apprentiship in chinese ideograms.
But one has to wait the end of 4th century, when commercials and some cultural exchanges really took off between Japan and the continent (Korea & China basically) to see the spoken tongue adopt the chinese characters to be transcribed on paper (writing).
To do so, the japanese choosed and adopted the chinese characters "kanji" because it was the closest and more appropriate to the sounds of the spoken japanese "Yamato Kotoba". They calle those new carachters "man'yogana"

With passing years, it has evolved into something particular and far more complicated than it's "mother tongue". Have a look at that :

Vocabulary
Three categories of words exist in Japanese. The native Japanese words constitute the largest category, followed by words originally borrowed from China in earlier history, and the smallest but a rapidly growing category of words borrowed in modern times from Western languages such as English. This third category also contains a small number of words that have come from other Asian languages. Studies by the National Language Institute show that the frequency of these three types of words varies according to the kinds of written material examined. In magazines, native Japanese words constitute more than half of the total words, while the Chinese borrowed words average about 40%, and the rest drawn from the recently borrowed words from Western languages. In newspapers, the words of Chinese origin number greater than the Japanese native words.
Sounds of the Language

Japanese has an open-syllable sound pattern, so that most syllables end in a vowel -- the syllable may be composed solely of the vowel. There are five vowels, /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/. Vowel length often distinguishes words, as in to for "door" and too for "ten." The basic consonants are: /k/, /s/, /t/, /n/, /h/, /m/, /y/, /r/, /w/, and the syllabic nasal /N/. Many of these consonants can be palatalized in front of the vowels /a/, /u/, and /o/, for example, /kya/, /kyu/, /kyo/. When the two consonants, /s/ and /t/, occur with the vowel /i/, these consonants are automatically palatalized as /shi/ and /chi/. The consonant /t/ is pronounced as /ts/ in front of the vowel /u/.

Unlike English, which has stress accent, Japanese has pitch accent, which means that after an accente
d syllable, the pitch falls. The word for "chopsticks," hashi, has the accent on the first syllable, so its pitch contour is ha shi. Without the accent on the first syllable, hashi may mean "bridge" or "edge." "Bridge" has accent on the second syllable, which can be seen if a grammatical particle such as the subject marker ga is attached to the word: hashi ga. "Edge" has no accent, so it would be pronounced without any fall in the pitch even with a grammatical marker such as ga.

if you want more details here is the link to the full story :

http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/articles/JapaneseLanguage.html

[trojanpunk]

wow everyone! thanks for all of the help. we'll go with the two symbols given by keiichi and keeni84. everyone's been great. much appreciated

[yimija]

Originally Posted by trojanpunk

wow everyone! thanks for all of the help. we'll go with the two symbols given by keiichi and keeni84. everyone's been great. much appreciated

anytime.
just ask.
you see, it works...

[den4]

what is your girlfriend using the kanji for?
if it's for a t-shirt or some graphic design, it may be good to learn how to write the characters correctly....
one of the annoying things is to see somebody write the characters sloppily without the correct order, causing misshaped letters with often missing pieces, making for a Japanized version of engrish

[trojanpunk]

yeah she's going to have to be very careful because she is thinking about getting it tattooed. her and her cousin. we've already talked about the risk of not having it done correctly

i've printed out a very large copy of the symbols above so we have a good reference point

[yimija]

Originally Posted by trojanpunk

yeah she's going to have to be very careful because she is thinking about getting it tattooed. her and her cousin. we've already talked about the risk of not having it done correctly

i've printed out a very large copy of the symbols above so we have a good reference point

well first :
go to an ASIAN tattooist or even better an asian tattoo artist
then :
make sure he has SERIOULSY studyied chinese and/or japanese CALIGRAPHY first. then go ahead.
Don't monkey around with your skin (or girl friend's)
dont forget, removing tattoo is difficult, expensive and it DOES HURT !!

[den4]

why the kanji for family? Seems kind of mundane for a tattoo....

[yimija]

Originally Posted by den4

why the kanji for family? Seems kind of mundane for a tattoo....

No, it's a proposal, but he hasn't realized, yet....

[den4]

so what does she do for the actual vows?
nothing drastic I hope

[trojanpunk]

no proposal guys :-P. her and her cousin and possibly her mom and aunt want to get a tattoo together. that's all. i'm definitely not getting that one. i have my own designs

[den4]

wonder if the stigma against tattoos still exist among the young people in Japan.....

compared to some of the ganguro makeup schemes, Tattoos may be tamer in comparison