Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

I'm very slowly working at learning Japanese. Today, for fun, I thought I'd see how "ninja" looks in Kanji.

忍者

The first character is "Endure. Sneak or Spy", and can be said "nin" or "shino".
The second, which when is stands alone is "sha" (as in shugyosha...), can also be said as "mono", and is "Person".

So, Ninja means... sneaky guy. Seems less glamourous somehow.

Yup. I was kind of dissapointed too when I found out what the word "ninja" really meant (etymologically speaking). However, it makes sense. Lots of Japanese swords are like that, pretty descriptive about what they're defining (just like the word "samurai" or "ronin", "one who serves" and "wave man").

ziritrion wrote:Yup. I was kind of dissapointed too when I found out what the word "ninja" really meant (etymologically speaking). However, it makes sense. Lots of Japanese swords are like that, pretty descriptive about what they're defining (just like the word "samurai" or "ronin", "one who serves" and "wave man").

Japanese "Swords"?

"His master's death made him a man on the waves" still has a lot more poetry to it than "You should have known better than to defy the Iga clan of sneaky fellows!"

Oops! I meant "words" . My keyboard is crazy

What's the difference between "ninja" and "shinobi"? I believe that they both mean the same, but what would be the literal translation of shinobi? Also, does anybody know its kanji?

The first character at the top of the thread is "shino". I've got enough of a grip on Japanese to know that the "no" in shinobi no mono would be a possessive indicator (chap of sneakiness?), but I haven't sorted out what the 'bi" is, other than an extra character in hiragana rather than kanji. Some sort of grammatical particle. Surely someone here actually speaks Japanese?

ziritrion wrote:What's the difference between "ninja" and "shinobi"?

AFAIK, shinobi is the correct term but it means thief or bandit.

Ninja is not actually a word but a name; the Ninja clan was the first to openly sell their stealth skills which made them (and thus the word) famous (like the people of the Assassin clan in Arabia after which the word assassin was coined). The word ninja is also mostly used outside of Japan; most Japanese don't know what a ninja would be.

Loosely translated, "shinobi" means "stealth".

Todd Shogun wrote:Loosely translated, "shinobi" means "stealth".

So says my dictionary about the Kanji 忍, which is gives the On (Chinese) pronunciation "nin" and the Kun (japanese) "shino". For Shinobi, it adds the hiragana Bi び . But... why?

Vexing linguistics! Can't be cut with sword nor axe! Grr! What fool started this thread?! ....oh, right.

...somehow, finding out that "ninja" means "sneaky guy" delights me to no end. Hurrah!

Matt