Brazil wrote:

> The meanings of the individual kanji are the same, but from what you
> write, it seems like in Chinese, those kanji don't usually go together
> and, if they do, it would imply an ordering by importance.
>
> At least that's how I understand it. A Chinese girl once told me that
> Chinese has hardly any grammar at all. Well, Japanese has, and this
> ordering would require additional grammatical constructs.

  I know that Japanese sentence structure is like Chinese, but backwards.  8)

  As for those words, yah, they don't usually go together, but not just because
that they are all nouns.

  For example Tenchi's name is "Sky", "Earth".  His name is used in common
expressions in Chinese (and probably Japanese.. etc), meaning literally
"everything under Heaven and on the Earth."  So its understood that Tenchi is a
"special person" for being named that.

  The other characters have similar names although they aren't standard Chinese
(or Japanese, I bet) names... Except for Mihoshi and Kiyonne.. they appear to be
more Japanese-sounding names?  Right?

  Does anyone know the significance of the middle word in:
  H

_  l

  The "me" part of Kagato's name?  In Chinese it is exactly used whenever you
would use "I" or "me."  And yet in Japanese the kanji for "I" or "me" is

watashi:  

Which means "personal" or "private" in Chinese.  Perhaps in Japanese the middle
character of Kagato's name means something else other than "me" or "I?"  (I
looked it up in a Japanese<->English dictionary and it doesn't explain it other
than "I."  I don't have a very good Japanese-English dictionary.. 8)  )

--
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Kevin Aw <kevinaw@home.com>