Death Mountain Trail - Learning Japanese with Ocarina of Time 4

There is commentary, but something I didn't go into in the video was mountain kanji and related terminology.

Kanji to learn: 山 (やま; yama) mountain; 登 (のぼ‐る; noboru) to climb; and 道 (どう; do) road.

Death Mountain Trail

In the picture above is Death Mountain Trail, with "Death Mountain" in katakana and "(mountain) trail" in kanji.

The katakana if straight forward: デスマウンテン, desumaunten, which is literally "Death Mountain". It's a typical use of the katakana to transmit English words.

The kanji is: 登山道, tozando, meaning mountain trail. The usage of 登 together with 山 means "mountain climbing" (tozan). By itself, 山 is yama. In this case it uses it's on'yomi, or "Chinese reading". So yama becomes zan.

登 is a third grade letter, and is usually substituted with 上 when spelling のぼる (to climb). 上 is the character for up, and is spelled うえ by itself. It's an easier letter seen in first grade.

The last kanji is 道 and it means "road". It is used pronounced the same as in Korean and is used to mean "the way" as well. It is used in the names of many martial arts, including Jeet Kune Do, Taekwando, and Judo. It's kun reading, or "Japanese reading", when used by itself to refer to a road in general, is michi (みち). Of course, when paired with other letters, it's Chinese reading is dou (どう).

Now, of course, we can't translate the three kanji (登山道) literally, because that would be "mountain climbing road". The fact that it's "mountain climbing" on the road implies the road is difficult to navigate and should be translated as "trail". So, altogether, tozando translates as "mountain trail".

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