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謳

I saw this character in a manga today and it was the first time I'd seen it. Is this kanji something most native speakers would recognize?

kandyman
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    Well, *I* know it, and I'm not a native speaker. Of course, being a native speaker and being literate are two different things, and you accidentally asked about the wrong one. –  Nov 29 '17 at 21:21
  • Do you remember where you came across it? I was wondering how common it is, and was using the gauge of whether native speakers recognize it. – kandyman Nov 29 '17 at 21:34
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    Sometimes we non-natives learn stuff which is totally irrelevant. I came across a phrase many years ago, 獅子奮迅の努力をする and I memorized it because I assumed it was a common phrase. But some time later I realized that anyone I mentioned it to didn't know what it was. I've done this several times, learning phrases nobody seems to know. It's kind of a waste of memory space, and I guess I was debating whether to include this kanji in my learning process or just forget about it. – kandyman Nov 29 '17 at 21:37
  • A kanji can be both recognized by literate Japanese and relatively infrequently used. The two are not mutually exclusive. – Leebo Nov 29 '17 at 21:47
  • @Leebo well that's pretty obvious. – kandyman Nov 30 '17 at 13:32
  • @kandyman well, the fact that you said you were gauging how common it was by how many natives recognize it suggested maybe it wasn't obvious to you. – Leebo Nov 30 '17 at 20:03
  • @Leebo you were mistaken in assuming that. – kandyman Nov 30 '17 at 22:20
  • @kandyman well, I'm not sure why you asked the question the way you asked it then, because the question as currently worded does not account for that. You (or someone else) could edit it though. – Leebo Nov 30 '17 at 22:31
  • @Leebo I don't want to edit it. I asked it exactly as I intended, thank you. If you find it troublesome, then I suggest you ignore this and find another thread to offer your 'help'. – kandyman Nov 30 '17 at 22:35
  • This is a collaborative site. Questions and answers are not solely for the benefit of the asker. Editing questions for clarity and precision makes the site more useful. But you seem to be taking it personally, so I'll leave you to it – Leebo Nov 30 '17 at 23:40
  • @Leebo The question doesn't need editing just because you misunderstood it. – kandyman Dec 03 '17 at 18:18
  • I don't think I did. You wanted to know if native speakers would recognize the kanji. You then said in the comments you were going to gauge how common it is based on that. Then I pointed out that you can't necessarily do that, and you said it's obvious that you can't. Maybe you misspoke in the comment? – Leebo Dec 03 '17 at 21:04
  • @Leebo Maybe you should take your own advice and go somewhere else. It's clear you have no intentions other than trying to sound important and/or provoking me. Either way, your input is unwanted. – kandyman Dec 03 '17 at 21:21
  • I don't think anything I said suggests that was my intention, but you're ignoring what I said so, okay, have a good one. – Leebo Dec 03 '17 at 21:41
  • Yes I often ignore people like you. But you finally seem to have gotten the message. Have a good one. – kandyman Dec 04 '17 at 02:02

2 Answers2

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I think virtually every adult native speaker knows this kanji (well, at least how to read it). The two formal meanings of 謳う listed in any dictionary are "to openly celebrate/praise/glorify/enjoy" and "to publicly declare". See: jisho.org and this entry. In these senses, using 歌う is absolutely incorrect.

  • この世の平和を謳う。
  • クレオパトラは絶世の美女だと謳われている。
  • それは頭痛に効くと謳われている薬です。
  • アメリカ合衆国憲法修正第2条は国民が武器を持つ権利を謳っている。

But you can always avoid using difficult kanji and stick to hiragana うたう. See this discussion, too.

In addition, this is one of those kanji used in aesthetic writings to add some literary/poetic flavor (like 護る vs 守る, 哭く vs 泣く). うたう meaning "to sing" has many variations including 歌う, 謳う, 唄う, 謡う and 唱う. In lyrics, 謳 is used somewhat arbitrarily, and the difference may not be very important.

naruto
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  • Thanks, I'm actually very interested in poetic usage of kanji, like the examples you mentioned 哭く vs 泣く. Do you know of any website which contains lists of such word pairs? – kandyman Nov 30 '17 at 13:30
  • I don't know such a list; what's poetic is a very subjective matter, and writers have [tons of options](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/26257/5010). By the way, I encountered this kanji 10 minutes ago [in this page](http://blog.nicovideo.jp/niconews/53475.html) :) – naruto Nov 30 '17 at 15:03
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I would say many would partly because 「青春{せいしゅん}を謳歌{おうか}する」("to really enjoy one's youth") is such a common set phrase.

Literally, that means "to sing the praises of youth".