Good article, but misses one very interesting detail.
E.g. in the example with 司る (tsukasadoru "be in charge"): the article says they "gave" the phrase a kanji. I would however assume that it happened the other way: the kanji was approximated with two Japanese words.
What's the difference? Let's go back to when kanji was adopted. The article notes Japanese writers approximated sounds with Chinese kanji readings, but there's another overlooked part: they also approximated Chinese text with Japanese words.
That is, traditionally they would often write in classical Chinese, but read it out loud in Japanese. Indeed, they developed a system[0] that let them retrofit an entire language, with a completely different sentence structure, phonetics, etc. into their own. Or, in short: they could read Chinese in Japanese.
This is likely where 司る comes from; some classical text using 司 in a way that was at some point best approximated by the Japanese word tsukasadoru in that context.
> [...] the word 有 'existed' marked with 下 'bottom' is shifted to the location marked by 上 'top'. Likewise, the word 鬻 'sell' marked with 二 'two' is shifted to the location marked by 一 'one'. The レ 'reverse' mark indicates that the order of the adjacent characters must be reversed.
> Following these kanbun instructions step by step transforms the sentence so it has the typical Japanese subject–object–verb argument order.
> Next, Japanese function words and conjugations can be added with okurigana, [...]
> The completed kundoku translation reads as a well-formed Japanese sentence with kun'yomi:
> 楚（そ）人に盾と矛とを鬻（ひさ）ぐ者有り
Obviously, the system comes with limitations; it's more of a system to analyze classical Chinese text than a way to magically translate it into Japanese. Still, I find it the most fascinating part of the language, because you can view it as a sort of "machine translation" from a millennium before computers existed, simply by abusing the fact that they used the same sort-of-semantic alphabet.
This is also where the "many readings of a single word" property of kanji comes from. Modern Japanese writing is the fusion of the phonetic and semantic interpretation of kanji - kana being the simplification of phonetic forms, and kanji's weird readings being derived from kanbun-kundoku.
> That is, traditionally they would often write in classical Chinese, but read it out loud in Japanese.
I seem to remember something similar from the Tarzan novel. He learns to read in English, but his first spoken language is French, so his understanding of how to make the words into sounds is all wrong.
E.g. in the example with 司る (tsukasadoru "be in charge"): the article says they "gave" the phrase a kanji. I would however assume that it happened the other way: the kanji was approximated with two Japanese words.
What's the difference? Let's go back to when kanji was adopted. The article notes Japanese writers approximated sounds with Chinese kanji readings, but there's another overlooked part: they also approximated Chinese text with Japanese words.
That is, traditionally they would often write in classical Chinese, but read it out loud in Japanese. Indeed, they developed a system[0] that let them retrofit an entire language, with a completely different sentence structure, phonetics, etc. into their own. Or, in short: they could read Chinese in Japanese.
This is likely where 司る comes from; some classical text using 司 in a way that was at some point best approximated by the Japanese word tsukasadoru in that context.
[0]: Example from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanbun (abridged):
> 楚人有(下)鬻(二)盾與(一)(レ)矛者(上)
> [...] the word 有 'existed' marked with 下 'bottom' is shifted to the location marked by 上 'top'. Likewise, the word 鬻 'sell' marked with 二 'two' is shifted to the location marked by 一 'one'. The レ 'reverse' mark indicates that the order of the adjacent characters must be reversed.
> Following these kanbun instructions step by step transforms the sentence so it has the typical Japanese subject–object–verb argument order.
> Next, Japanese function words and conjugations can be added with okurigana, [...]
> The completed kundoku translation reads as a well-formed Japanese sentence with kun'yomi:
> 楚（そ）人に盾と矛とを鬻（ひさ）ぐ者有り
Obviously, the system comes with limitations; it's more of a system to analyze classical Chinese text than a way to magically translate it into Japanese. Still, I find it the most fascinating part of the language, because you can view it as a sort of "machine translation" from a millennium before computers existed, simply by abusing the fact that they used the same sort-of-semantic alphabet.
This is also where the "many readings of a single word" property of kanji comes from. Modern Japanese writing is the fusion of the phonetic and semantic interpretation of kanji - kana being the simplification of phonetic forms, and kanji's weird readings being derived from kanbun-kundoku.