If Japanese was my native language, probably yes. And languages aren’t made to be predictable to people who have grown up with another language. In the same way I can make predictions based on many sounds in the english language -ise, un-, an-, -ly, -ed, etc,. Also keep in mind that japanese has the kanji to ‘help’ the predictability. Japanese natives learn that semantic radicals most often (not always) but most often point toward the meaning. That on top of the sound cues that are already there lay the foundation for a pretty solid understanding.
We do have to take extreme care not to interpret Japanese through the western language lens.
Our own cognitive biases might hinder us from seeing things that are more obvious to people who have Japanese thinking as a platform.
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This big over-site here is that historically japanese had a different sets of kana. You’d have to account how this metaphysically embedded psychology changed over time, or conceded that japanese is likely has a highly disjointed form of the Universal Grammar a la Chomsky when compared to English.
I like that idea that we could atomize Japanese and follow that to create a meaning for each mora, but I think that you are taking quite large leaps in general. In a very real sense is like are are arguing that the ‘a’ character has an inherent meaning because it it used in words like atheist, abiogenesis, etc., rather than recognize the relatively obvious fact that there could be a family of cognates that do in fact follow along one morpheme as a suffix or prefix. That when seemingly isolated this morpheme is a kana by itself when in reality it is just a morpheme that is only one mora long.
The other oversight is that the む you speak of is a onyomi, not a kunyomi. Which means that it is also not a foundationally Japanese linguistic or psychological atomic unit but a Chinese one. So take that for what it is.
If I am missing something let me know. I do want to find new ways to think about Japanese and I do think that are ways to think of the particles in a consistent way, but that doesn’t involve a metaphysical treatise.
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I like your line of thinking. But keep in mind that Japanese didn’t have a written form before the integration of chinese pictographs, and even then we have to keep in mind that many times certain pictorgrams were chosen specifically for their sound component, not meaning… manyogana or something I think they were called? I could be mistaken there, a bit rusty on that part of history.
However, Japanese was a fully functioning language before chinese pictograms were used, and when they did start being used, many changes were made over time to adapt these symbols into japanese. This is a key point, kanji were adapted to fit japanese. They didn’t change japanese to match the kanji, it was the other way around. Even moving on from this, the history of the japanese language is very shaky past a certain point, it is a lot of speculation.
But imagine it this way. let’s say we have english, a fully functioning spoken language, but there is no written form. Then say we gain access to a few thousand pictograms to represent our ideas, I think we could do a pretty solid job of organizing things into categories. That is one thing I think Japanese has which is entirely unique to most other languages, the written form didn’t evolve in line with the spoken form, they had the opportunity to take a written system and mold it to suit them all at once.
While there are certainly exceptions and limitations, I like to think that there is more than meets the eye. as for onyomi vs kunyomi, I believe both are vital to each kanji. one for ‘idea’, one for ‘nuance’. As for the kanji that have many readings, I think that purely reflects that particular kanjis wide range of use. 日 for example literally can refer to sun, day, mind, master, dominance, purity. Probably many more. While most of those nuances are very few and far between, they do exist. Anyway, imagining and pondering on what is beneath the surface of a language is half the fun, at least for me 
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I mean that’s fine, I agree. But that’s exactly my point. A lot of your argument is based off of sounds that were brought into Japanese later than whenever Japanese originally started.
Japanese was originally phonetically isolated, but the onyomi were brought over from China, with some Japonification. And while in lots of circumstances the Japanese simply used kanji to represent ideas they already had eg 大人、竹刀 etc. They also aquried many new ideas they hadn’t had before eg. 我田引水
Your overall argument is that we could distill down each mora into a distinct meaning and then by composing them we can come to understand the Japanese way of thinking.
I just find that to be wholly unconvincing for the reasons stated above.
I’m very open to a discussion of the development and history of these phonemes and morphemes’ relationship to kanji and the particle system, without a convoluted appeal to Japanese psychology.
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Hmm, give me some time to reply to this, I think the best way I can illustrate my point is with a drawing, so I will do a mock up of something.
As for distilling down each meaning, I think each object should be approached on a singular object sound symbolism basis. For example, when we talk about an object we must approach it as if it were a sole entity and use the sounds in that way.
からだ Body- lets pretend this means (origin of action). Now if we pretend からだ is the base, using other sounds does not become too far fetched.
あし (object used for movement)
て (thing for going from A to B, as a tool or transporting things)
あたま (place from where からだ exists. Head/mind)
むね (thing hidden within からだ、chest cavity)
こし (core from which からだ makes actions)
め (place from where からだ interacts outwardly with its surroundings) (follows usual め trend of distinguishing something)
みみ (place from where からだ reacts inwardly with its surroundings) (follows usual み trend of sensing something)
くち (place from where things come toward/enter からだ) (follows usual くる coming toward/ち road/passage, patterns)
By isolating an object/idea as a sole concept, it isnt too much of a stretch to list off potential sound ‘hints’ for things related to it.
As you mention though, this too is just conjecture. I am not trying to prove it or disprove it, just looking for links. As for Japanese psychology, I won’t speak for japanese directly, but languages in general do greatly affect psychology. That is already a well established theory.
No, this is my main point. My disagreement starts right here.
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This is really cool, and has gotten me interested in learning Japanese again after not doing it since High School. Would you be able to post a document(or maybe an extremely long post) of all of the meanings/functions and groupings of each kana you’ve discovered so far, if you’ve done some for every kana so far?
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Hmm I’m not going to say you’re wrong but the thing is that you can basically find an interpretation of anything to match anything if you do enough ‘let’s pretend this means this’ and so on. Said another way, you can basically always make an interpretation of anything that will fit into your overall interpretation if you allow enough ‘interpreting’. Have you ever seen those memes where they go on some massive tangent of logic from one thing to some crazy conclusion using superficially plausible logic, like showing why one sentence in the bible actually means the word will end in 2020 or whatever? It’s easy to make connections between things that aren’t necessarily there. It’s also kind of like how horoscopes are written in a way that simultaneously makes them SEEM specific and personal while also applying to almost anyone. I think your definitions for some of the kana are like that, they are vague enough that you can create an interpretation of them to match basically anything if you allow enough interpretation. I remember coming across a great example of this in the past, there is probably even a name for this specific type of logic problem but I can’t remember it.
TLDR:
Let’s put it this way. Do a test, try swapping the meanings of some of the kana that you’ve made and see if you can still find some way to make interpretations that kind of make sense for any Japanese word. If you can, that’s a problem.
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Precisely, though the way you quoted it, it looks like I’m the one who said the stuff you are critiquing lol
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Oh woops you’re right I didn’t notice, I will try to fix it.
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Hi Guys, sorry for tagging all of you and sorry for replying so late. I actually moved to japan 6 weeks ago and as you can imagine life has been really hectic trying to set things up after I arrived. I still believe my ‘theory’ to hold at least some merit and have done extensive research on it now. Including writing a list for the basic concepts that each kana represents.
I have actually rewritten a lot of the heisig radicals as well, as many… many of the radicals only have a single meaning that applies to all words they appear in that heisig overlooks. I will include references from everything I put forward from some of the most reliable sources of Japanese language study books, such as the dictionaries of basic, intermediate and advanced japanese grammar. I will then show you how applying the ‘single kana single meaning’ rule transforms kanji radicals from ‘helpful memory tools’, to integral meaning components.
Once again I am super sorry for the delay and I will post my findings soon. Please keep in mind that I value all of your feedback and while I am not trying to force feed anyone this theory, I would also like to mention that you guys also need to do what you are telling me to do as well, don’t apply your interpretation of japanese to something that may not be the case. I look forward to reading your thoughts after I post (positive or negative, I still appreciate the opinions)
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There is a completely different discussion to how far one should take the Heisig’s component scheme or the traditional japanese approach of phoneto-sematnic characters.
Most characters break into a semantic and phonetic piece, a meaning and a sound component. Heisig’s approach asks one to trying and incorporate the semantic meaning of the sound piece into the mnemonic.
For example:
Imagine the Kanji 賄 - Bribe
This has two components:
- 貝 - Money
- 有 - Posses
The Heisig method would as us to remember that a good way to remember this kanji would be to remember it along side a story like:
- A Bribe requires one to Possess Money.
A more economical version is recognize that the 貝 - Money component contributes complete to the meaning that the 有 - Posses component contributes to the sounds part. Indicating a phonetic series that the Onyomi is a part of. In this case
有 - Posses Is part of the 又 phonetic series ウ・ユウ (that is the top component of this kanji 又＋月, this is a rabbit hole of analysis; alas, this thread it already such a thing) and in this kanji the Onyomi is ワイ. So even at the end of this analysis we end up short.
For those curious can play this game with more fruitful kanji;
正、生、青、成 and you can find much tighter coherence of the sound component to their phonetic series, but It is only just above 50%.
In the end weather it is better to focus on solely on the Semantic component to set your mnemonics or is it at least worth a bit of mixing in of the sound component in is up the learner.
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I fully agree with this part. My only concern about heisig at all is it doesn’t take deixis into consideration, so quite a few of the meanings are wrong… Well… Not wrong but 50/50. because they don’t take into account the non speaker perspective that isn’t present in english.
Take まだれ for example (广 this radical). The actual meaning signifies an interchange (a place that links one thing and another). Now if you look up the kanji containing 广、the meanings all become clear.
広 (a link between individuals) -public space-
庄 (a linked area of land) -country, manor, village-
序 (a link between the previous state and the next) -order, ordering, beginning, start
応 (a link between an individual’s mind/heart and the subject/object) -answer, agreement, affirmation, opinion-
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oh my god man I feel so dumb right now, the more I try the less I understand what you wrote
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Hahah, don’t sweat it. It is probably me who is the crazy one, seeing links where they may or may not exist.
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む is beyond existence and non-existence. む is no thing. Not a thing. For something to exist or not exist, it must be thingness in essence, not just appearance. Everything is made of む, appears in む, and is む, appearing as something other than but actually remains む in essence. And while む is appearing as everything, it also transcends everything as the knowing of everything. We’ll never nail it down or grasp it because it isn’t a thing. It is in finite (not finite).
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A couple of slightly off-topic questions before I post a comment with my thoughts:
I have not read Heisig’s book, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe his goal was to make a system that helps learner’s memorize kanji. It wasn’t to make a scientifically and historically accurate analysis of the sounds and kanji the Japanese made or imported. Not to say that radicals don’t play a role in the kanji’s meaning.
What’s supposed to be the function of “です” in this sentence? “分かりませんか？” (or plainly “わからない(か)?”) is already enough to ask “Isn’t it clear/don’t you understand?”
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My comment is completely unrelated to Japanese, but this paragraph caught my eye.
The words atheist, abiogenesis and many other similar words are Greek. In Greek, the character “a” (Α, α) does have an inherent meaning (no, without, nonexistent) in every single compound word, as far as I’m aware.
For example:
- αδιάφορο: α + διαφορά → no difference / “uninteresting”, doesn’t make a difference
- αδύνατο: α + δυνατός → not possible / impossible
- ασύμφορο: α + συμφέρον → no benefit / non-beneficial
- αδίστακτο: α + δισταγμός → no hesitation / unhesitating
Or have I misunderstood your comment? Perhaps you meant that while “a” does have that meaning when used as a prefix, it doesn’t when it appears anywhere else in a word. In that case — which is more likely now that I think about it — apologies for misunderstanding and hope you found this comment interesting in some way.
My thoughts on the theory presented in this post
I like reading new theories and discovering new ways to interpret and understand Japanese. Your theory that every kana has an inherent meaning is certainly grounded in reality, but it seems to me you’re stretching it too far.
Most of us probably figured out at some point that こ, そ, あ mean something along of the lines of “close, far, far away” in various little words (like これ, こちら, この). Same goes for other kana used in particles and conjunctions.
Yet, taking that as proof that, for example, the kana あ always carries the meaning of “over there” or “far away”, even when it’s part of a big compound word made up of multiple kanji and their Chinese imported readings, would simply be like connecting dots that are way too far apart and trying to interpret the mess that results as an actual picture of something.
Regarding the particles and conjunctions, you say:
That’s certainly true, but it stands on its own. There’s no need to come up with a grand cosmotheory about まま and planes of existence to make sense of it. It already makes sense.
For example, “それでも” is said to mean “nevertheless” or something along those lines.
Memorizing that as a fact using brute force (repetition) is unnecessary since it makes a lot of sense if we break it down:
- それ that
- で being (て form of だ)
- も even
All together it clearly means something like: “even (with) that being (the case)…”
As you can see, I like that way of thinking. It’s not just interesting in a “what-if” kind of way. It actually makes guessing the meaning of conjunctions easy.
As others have already said…
I agree with those people. Your grand theory is… interesting, and there are a few points that are definitely valid. But it really does feel like you’re coming up with the more abstract parts in the spot in order to explain what you already know, and that it doesn’t hold much power as a sort of guide that helps you guess or understand the meaning of unknown words.
PS: There’s a book called “Unlocking Japanese” and I thought your post would be about that 
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