Word of the day - 和
In Mandarin Chinese, the word 和 (hé) has a number of meanings. On it’s own it is usually means ‘and’, but also means harmony, peace, to be affable, the sum, and ‘of Japan’.
Here are a few words featuring this character:
和平 (hépíng) - peace; peaceful; mild
和鳴 [和鸣] (hémíng) - to sound in harmony
和風 [和风] (héfeng) - a gentle breeze
和服 (héfú) - a (Japanese) kimono
和氣 [和气] (héqi) - gentle; affable; agreeable; friendly
和聲 [和声] (hésheng) - (musical) harmony
When pronounced hè, this character means to match; to harmonize, or to write a poem in reply (和詩). It has another pronunciation - huò - which means to knead or to mix. Apparently some people pronounce it han as well, but I’ve never heard that pronunciation.
In Japanese, this character is pronounced wa, o, yawa- or nago- and means peace; harmony; the sum; the total; Japan and various other things.
4 Responses to “Word of the day - 和”
Thomas (babelhut.com) on 19 Oct 2007 at 5:45 pm #
In Japanese it also has an uncommon reading where it is used in the word 大和 (yamato), as in 大和魂 (yamato damashii - Japanese Spirit) or 大和時代 (yamato jidai - Yamato period [250AD - 710AD])
goofy on 19 Oct 2007 at 6:27 pm #
和食 wa shoku - Japanese food
Weili on 20 Oct 2007 at 3:56 pm #
In Taiwan, this character is pronounced as both han and he when used as and/with. Under my impression the han pronunciation only exists in Taiwan.
yuko on 22 Oct 2007 at 12:26 pm #
In Japanese, it is also pronounced as “ka-zu” ,
which is likely to be choosen as a name of boys and girls,
ex)
ka-zu-mi (和美）for boys and girls
ka-zu-ko （和子）for girls
yo-shi-ka-zu（良和）for boys