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I have also heard the story of the Buddhist monk, but there is also another theory that the word ???, which is thought to have originated in Sanskrit and traveled to Korea, was reinterpreted as ? ? by some people, giving it a linguistic link to birds and the ? counter.
The common narrative goes that because Japanese Buddhist monks could only consume birds for meat, they “reclassified” rabbits as flightless birds because of the way their bodies tasted.
The most satisfying origin seems to be Sanskrit, but I’ll add another that comes from Wikipedia: hunters would tie up and carry their kills in bundles, carrying them by the ears. One bundle would be ?? (???), two ??. Having allegedly counted rabbits in this manner, ? came to be connected with ?.
I would like to include a brief note regarding the etymology of ???, which has been discussed in several posts on this thread.
? We already know how to count in Japanese for both small and large animals. Nevertheless, a distinct counter that is distinct from both of these is used by birds and rabbits!
? Today we’ll learn how to count birds and rabbits using the Japanese counter ? (? wa)!
See below for some of our previous counting lessons, including the one we learned today about counting birds and rabbits in Japanese.
? Please use the numbers below to count more than ten birds or rabbits. Try to see the pattern, just like with other forms of Japanese counting (11 is 10 and 1, 12 is 10 and 2, etc.). ).
Counting in Japanese can take many different forms, depending on what kind of object you’re counting! Today we’ll learn how to count birds and rabbits in Japanese!
Ancient forms and evidence in Eastern Old Japanese
Although those sources claim that the word “rabbit” originated in ?, this isn’t entirely accurate based on what I could find. This is cited in the ?????????? of 720 by the ???? entry in the ???????????????????? (NKD) dictionary:
In both cases, the Chinese term ? is rendered in phonetic Old Japanese as ? or u. ??? or tobiu is presumably a precursor to modern ?????????, but I have no idea what ??? or upona is supposed to be. While this does show u used to mean “rabbit”, there are cases in Old Japanese of terms used in abbreviation, such as ? saka abbreviated to just sa.
In addition, the ???????????? collection of poetry was completed in 759 and includes poems dating back another hundred years or so. Poem 3529 records the eastern dialectal Japanese word for “rabbit” in phonetic many?gana as ????????. Eastern Japanese would be even less likely to include borrowed and compounded Sanskrit words.
FAQ
How to say 1000 birds in Japanese?
How do you count animals in Japan?