JJapanese

Question about the word “fight”

闘い and 戦い sound the same on google translate. Extreme novice here, just wondering:
A.) what is the difference in spelling for?
B.) which is more “traditional”

Figured I’d turn to ya’ll for some help on this one.

Thanks in advance!

2 comments

  1. I don’t think even most native Japanese speakers (including myself) really know the difference between those two. Just did some googling and apparently 戦い is used for things that decide placements (like sports and elections), while 闘い is used for general fights for profit, for your opinion, against hardship, and stuff like that. For example fighting against a storm as a sailor would be 闘い. Thanks for this question it was a TIL for me too.

  2. A) The Characters 鬭/闘 & 戰/戦 are different Characters with different etymologies and different histories. The have different uses separately and together form the word 戰鬭/ 戦闘

    However, specifically for the word たたかい, it appears that they are sort of just representative placeholders.

    The Kanji themselves contribute to meaning, but 戰い, 戦い, 鬭い, 闘い, etc all seem to be treated as the same word, just with a different Kanji in them. In dictionaries it just says “also written as X” rather than indicating that they are synonyms.

    They do appear to have different every day uses, but this seems to be more as a matter of course rather than an actual rule.

    B) Neither is more “traditional”. Why would that need to be the case?

Leave a Reply
— Previous article

Change of Address - ERFS
Next article —

Japanese summer college courses

You May Also Like