Kanji of Eternity or Eternal
 

Hey Everybody!

i just wanna know the kanji of these two words,

please help me ^^

arigato!

永 if you need one kanji, but there are many 2 kanji phrases with that meaning, such as 永久 or 無限.

and what are the differences between the -永- and -永久- ???

永 is not a word in itself, it's just a character with that meaning. The most common words you are looking for are probably 永遠、永久。I'm not quite sure about the exact difference but I think that 永遠 probably fits the English meaning of eternal a little better.

Maybe it's just me, but 永遠 sounds more emotional and 永久 has more of a meaning like "permanent" to me. Anyway, I could be totally off with this since I'm not a native speaker ;)

It is a word on its own, same as 机, 空, 車, 絵, 靴 旭, 月 are words as well, and thousands of other words expressed by one character.

As to the 永遠 and 永久, there meaning is identical, however, it may be closely defined depending on what phrase it is followed by. For instance 永遠 is used usually for expressing feelings or emotions, whereas 永久 is mostly used for defining eternity of things / conditions.

Having said that, 永 is a word that can express any type of infinity / eternity.

Is it read, as a word, なが, よう, or えい? I've seen dictionary entries confusing me on that point. I only know it within compounds as えい.

Indeed these are words but I have never seen 永 being used by itself like these. Only when it modifies a Noun, 永のN。

thanks ryuurui, now i understand their meanings!!

That is a first. Can you show us a sentence using 「永」 as a word all by itself?　

The fact that you have not seen it, does not mean that it cannot be used as such.

@masaegu Have you ever heard of poetry?

@Kyle; as a stand alone kanji, I'd read it as えい.

Don't get carried away. What is the point of discussing this on THAT kinda level with someone whose current level of Japanese is the following? :)

Oh, I didn't look at it from this perspective. I was linguistically blinded lol :D

Now I understand what you mean ryuurui. I think almost all Kanji can be used as as standalone words/meanings words when it comes to poetry or art. I was just saying that I haven't seen it in an everyday context :)

Well, poetry is one example, but another is the jungle of 熟語. For instance the idiom 一労永逸. Since 永逸 is not a word, it means that 永 has a stand alone meaning as "eternity", although, to be more precise, in this case 永 stands for "a very long time". (一労永逸 could be roughly translated as "hardship will ensure extended benefit"). And I do know that many 熟語 were in fact classical poetry verses.

In the alternative, you could say the ４字熟語 is a single word expressing a very complex concept! :)

I suppose we could. I think this is why I find kanji so fascinating. You cannot simply define them, and there is always another layer hidden somewhere behind the strokes.

It's primarily hard because the concept of a "word" is pretty defined in English as something like "aggregation of pronounceable letters that contains no spaces." "Word" is a term for languages with spaces in it.

This is why linguists have terms like morpheme, grapheme, etc.