By Sheer Chance of Timing…

 I made the connection between two words today.  

Recently, we have been listening to, and practicing reading, the Tadoku book, シュモーハウス.  In it, at one point, they are met at the train station by the governor of Hiroshima Province and by the Mayor of Hiroshima City - 広島市長（しちょう) (& other suchlike luminaries など ;)).  This was a term that I had stumbled over a few times - the sh sound so close to the ch sound, and trying to keep the right speed and fluidity, whilst not running the shi for city too hard into Hiroshima or divorcing it from the rest of the term (& at some point, realising that it was the alternate pronunciation for the 長い (ながい) kanji - perhaps because they were originally picked village elders, or greybeards as we would call them (somewhat disrespectfully) in western culture - maybe long beards in Japanese?  Or just for length of life & experience?

Anyway, I just started looking at the vocabulary for Nakama 2, chapter 3, at lunchtime today and one of the nouns was company president. And I looked at the pronunciation & thought that しゃちょう was almost as hard to say as しちょう was (I think my brain was already trying to tell me something ;)) & then realised that it might be the same root/word - town/city “president” (mayor) & company president… I’ver been fooled by this before, same sound but different root, despite a similar meaning (coming originally from a biology background, I call this parallel or convergent evolution.  I’m sure there’s a linguistic term for it too).

I looked across at the kanji and was pleased & not surprised to see that it was 社 for company & 長 for president and it was the same word/root.  I would never have connected the two things if it hadn’t been for the timing of the class assignment (& having slight problems saying it, so it stuck in my head more thoroughly than it might have otherwise).

And look, no footnotes!  I would say that it is a record, but I just kept all my digressions to parentheses today ;) :p.

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