Hi all!
I had a question. I came across the Kanji 坩堝 and was trying to look it up. I found it hard to find and what I found was that individually they are 坩(crucible) (がん being the only pronunciation I think I found) and 堝 (crucible) (カ/るつぼ) my question is why is 坩堝 pronounced the same as just 堝? and why use both of them together when they both mean crucible?
Thank you for your help!
2 comments
Because るつぼ means crucible, regardless of kanji, and a lot of kanji compounds are redundant, being basically two Chinese words that mean the same thing (or, in some cases like perhaps this one, they are *two-syllable* Chinese morphemes that end up represented with two same-radical phono-semantic characters like these). When you bring that into Japanese, you end up with a lot of looseness about how to represent it–since the word is redundant in the first place, it doesn’t change the meaning whether you just use one or use both.
The real question is (and I really am curious): why is るつぼ a native Japanese word at all? Those aren’t supposed to begin with R-line morae!
I don’t know where you’re looking up words but it’s the top result on [Jisho](https://jisho.org/word/%E5%9D%A9%E5%A0%9D) if you search for “crucible”.
> why use them together if they both mean crucible?
This is a veeeeery common word structure
For example 種類 means kind/type, which is what both of the kanji mean
眼球 = eyeball. 眼 itself means eyeball and 球 means sphere
恐怖 = fear. Both kanji themselves mean fear
場所 = place/location. Both kanji mean “place”
It’s important to remember that kanji are not words.