大丈夫

[Koneko]

Why the Chinese Hanzi for "Great Man", ie, 大丈夫, becomes "No Problem" in Japanese Kanji?

More interesting examples also include

Chinese meanings Hanzi/ Kanji Japanese meanings

True Colour 真面目 Serious

Hand paper 手纸 Letter

To cut a hand 切手 Stamp

[geek_frappa]

this is interesting.. how do you say that in japanese?

and i do remember seeing in class that "book/novel" is a strange combination of Hanzi and Japanese characters... or am i mistaken?

[Claw]

"Emergency exit" is 非常口 (literally: extreme/unusual mouth) in Japanese. I found that out while reading one of the safety cards on an airplane.

[Quest]

口 just means an openning.

[xuechengfeng]

I'm getting frustrated learning Japanese because the borrowing the Hanzi and they don't even use half the ones I know for certain words, they use alternate ones.

[yonglan]

勉強 is the favorite such example of my Taiwanese friends.

非常口 has it's orginis in the classical language as do many Japanese meanings for kanji -- so look there (or a _good_ Chinese dictionary for archaic meanings). For instance, to understand 非常口 without even looking in a dictionary, just look at the first line of the 道德經‧

[Ian_Lee]

Read earlier thread related to this topic:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=718