Method & sources

What we claim, and what we don't

• Chinese and Japanese are not related languages. Japanese borrowed characters and a large Sino-Japanese vocabulary from Chinese from about the 5th century; from the 1860s Chinese borrowed back hundreds of terms Japan had coined or repurposed in kanji.
• Every word carries one of five relation tags and a confidence grade: certain (both standard dictionaries agree and the relation is uncontroversial), probable (mainstream view with reservations, typical for claims about which way a modern term travelled), or disputed (with a note naming the competing view).
• Reading patterns are tendencies with exceptions, and say so. Middle Chinese is given in Baxter's transcription; it is a reconstruction, not a recording.
• Every Chinese and Japanese form is checked by script against CC-CEDICT, JMdict, KANJIDIC2 and Unihan before release. Meanings, relation tags and notes are editorial and can be wrong: corrections are welcome.

Sources

• CC-CEDICT, community-maintained Chinese–English dictionary (MDBG).CC BY-SA 4.0
• JMdict Japanese–Multilingual Dictionary, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG).CC BY-SA 4.0 (EDRDG licence)
• KANJIDIC2 kanji dictionary, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG).CC BY-SA 4.0 (EDRDG licence)
• Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Standard Annex #38.Unicode License v3
• Federico Masini, The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and its Evolution toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series 6, 1993.
• Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity — China, 1900–1937. Stanford University Press, 1995. Appendices A–B (return graphic loans and Sino-Japanese-European loanwords).
• Bjarke Frellesvig, A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• William H. Baxter, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Mouton de Gruyter, 1992 (Middle Chinese transcription).
• Marc Hideo Miyake, Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
• 常用漢字表 (Jōyō kanji list), Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan, 2010.
• 通用规范汉字表 (Table of General Standard Chinese Characters), State Council of the PRC, 2013.

Licences and attribution

This site uses CC-CEDICT and the JMdict and KANJIDIC2 files of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used in conformance with the Group's licence (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0), and the Unicode Han Database under the Unicode License. Dictionary-derived forms and readings on this site are shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.

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