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I’m on season 4, but currently, I have burnout from studying the same vocab over and over. I decided to take a break and make an anki animal list, mostly because it gives me an excuse to look at adorable animal pictures all day. <3
The problem is the word for ‘lion.’ There’s the katakana engrish reading: ライオン and the more traditional-sounding しし (which I think is the only proper reading for the kanji 獅子)
Are both of these right? What’s the difference? Which one is used in which situations? Aren’t pictures of baby lions adorable? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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This topic was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by
Christen.
Anonymousライオン is more common. 獅子seems to mean a dog according to a sentence I read.
Thank you very much for your help!
As for the sentence: 獅子 does mean lion, but it can also mean the left-hand guardian dog at a Shinto shrine, which is probably what the sentence meant. Dog is just 犬.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by
しし is also occasionally translated as “lion-dog”. As you commented, it’s the guardian statue at temples and other important structures. It’s kind of an Easternised version of the lion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_guardian_lion
The real animal is ライオン.
P.S. Hot-linking images is naughty. Also, blocked.
Oops! I forgot about hotlinking! (The meaning of which I had to google to remember to what it was…) But thank you for the distinction between the two!
I think 獅子 must mean the regular lion too, because when you plug it into google it comes up with pictures of lions…
They’re all in Chinese. =P
…CHINESE IS A THING. *bangs head against desk*
獅子 seems to be used for Lion in Japanese sometimes too. It’s just much less common and of Chinese origin instead of English.
Eg:
http://www.karakusamon.com/lion.html
“シシ (獅子) の別名をもち，〈百獣の王〉と呼ばれ，ネコ科ではトラと並ぶ強大な食肉類）。”
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This topic was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by
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