On 'awkward' (尴尬)

[AxelD]

Hi all

 

So in class we came upon this word and the teacher asked herself if the components of the word were original or if they were apparant in other characters as well. 

 

I would like to know more about the character.

 

Thanks in advance! 

 

Edit: Thanks everybody for answering my question. Indeed, my question should have been posed a bit more clear. I was wondering if there were other words that had the 尴 or 尬 (each as a whole) in them, because my dictionaries did not have them. This can be closed now.  

 

P.S.: Great to know this community is alive and well, for further questions on China I will be coming back here. 

[Demonic_Duck]

Huh? 尴 = 尢 + 监 and 尬 = 尢 + 介.

 

Edit: to elaborate on this, it seems fairly apparent that “监” and “介” must be sound components ([jiān] -> [gān] and [jiè] -> [gà]). As for “尢”, I'm not too sure... it seems as a radical it's taken to be a simplification of “尤”, but I don't know what specific meaning it is expressing here.

[AxelD]

Yes ofcourse, thanks for the reply. However, I should have been more clear. I was just wondering if the characters 尴 or 尬 (as a whole) were part of any other characters? Because I have not seen them yet anywhere else.

[crt32]

You can use mdbg.net to search for words containing these characters or characters containing them as components.

It doesn't look like there are any, but then again you could just make up new characters if you feel like it

[Michaelyus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_43

[陳德聰]

Is there a misunderstanding here? What I assume you mean is "unique" and "appearing" rather than "original" and "apparant". 尴 and 尬 don't appear in words other than 尴尬.

[Demonic_Duck]

It's also not quite clear whether you want to know if there are other characters which contain “尴” or “尬” as components, or if there are other words which contain “尴” or “尬” as constituent characters.

 

In either case, the answer seems to be "no" (or if there are, they're extremely rare/non-standard).

[Altair]

尴尬 is a doublet, like 蜘蛛、踯躅、麒麟、鞑靼、葡萄.  In such words, the repetition of the same radical helps show that the two characters are linked.  These seem almost always to be either somewhat specialized terms or words influenced by onomatopoeia and so are exceptions to the rule that Chinese words derive from one-syllable morphemes.

 

With such words, the non-radical portion seems almost always to be a sound component, and the characters as a whole don't seem to be reused as components for larger characters since they do not have much independent existence outside the doublet.

[Michaelyus]

Although there is 尬戏...

[AxelD]

@Altair: Yes, I thought it was going to be something like that, thanks! 

 

@Michaelyus: What does 尬戏 mean?  

[Michaelyus]

Actually I've always thought of 尬戏 as a new Internet-age term for "an embarrassing scene", which I thought was obviously derived from 尴尬 + 戏剧; but it seems that Wikipedia has another use, to describe actors or other performance artists 较劲, i.e. being rivals or in competition. It's not particularly archaic, although it certainly feels literary to me.

 

Another word that has occurred to me: 尬舞. Again I'm not too sure of its definition, being a rather recent word, but it seems to refer to B-boy dance battles.

[li3wei1]

尴尬 is a doublet, like 蜘蛛、踯躅、麒麟、鞑靼、葡萄.  In such words, the repetition of the same radical helps show that the two characters are linked.  These seem almost always to be either somewhat specialized terms or words influenced by onomatopoeia and so are exceptions to the rule that Chinese words derive from one-syllable morphemes.

 

游泳 would be an example of a word formed of two characters with the same radical that doesn't fit this pattern (both fairly widely used elsewhere), and I'm sure there are other examples.

[AxelD]

Exactly, another example would be 蝴蝶 (if I'm not mistaken). It's a whole different topic though, but at least equally interesting imo. Thanks again for the feedback.

[Demonic_Duck]

I'd say “蝴蝶” is as much inseperable as “蜘蛛”, but it looks like “蝶”, “蜘” and “蛛” can all be found in other words/phrases on their own (generally derivative of the original word).

 

Examples:

蝶泳

蝶骨

庄周梦蝶 (not sure in this case if it really is derivative... which came first, 蝴蝶 or 蝶?)

狼蜘 a.k.a. 狼蛛

鼠蜘 a.k.a. 鼠蛛

蛛网

[AxelD]

Yes exactly, but by that logic 游泳 can be separated into 游客，游戏，...

[Demonic_Duck]

In all the words/phrases I mentioned, the characters carried the meaning of the full two-character word. However, “游” rarely has the meaning “游泳” - in fact, in the two words you mentioned, it's a different character in traditional (遊). If you want to convey the meaning “游泳” in one character, you'd normally use “泳” instead (仰泳、蛙泳、自由泳、 the aforementioned 蝶泳).

[Messidor]

尴尬 belongs to a word category called 连绵词----the two or more characters share the same consonant or vowel or both in ancient times, and they are bound to form a word. Either 尴 or 尬 is fixed morpheme

[Michaelyus]

Just noticed this one, despite having watched this video for years! The grapheme 尬 is used to represent what would conventionally be written as 共 (POJ = "kā") meaning "with" in Min Nan, in the "subtitles" used in the music video to Sodagreen's 無眠. This is carried over to the (standard?) KTV version.

[gaogaozhan]

 

尴尬 belongs to a word category called 连绵词

 

Indeed, part of 连绵词

It's also part of 双声节不自由语素

Why are we making things so complicated?

[陳德聰]

Because the reality is complicated...