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A comment on The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild. Parent comment

Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by xxxpupugo on Saturday August 17, 2019 @05:47AM (#20723103)
Actually, no. 可 is like 'the be able to' prefix in Japanese/Chinese, so 可愛 is can be seen as a compound word because of that, literally means 'is able to be loved'

In Chinese, it can be further compounded into many common phrases:

可悲(pathetic, 可+'sad')

可气(annoying/irritating, 可+'anger')

可怜(pitiful, 可+'pity')

可恨(resentful, 可+'hate')

What would be a more suitable example would be 可(ke)乐(le) in my opinion, in which case it means Coke in Chinese, it is a transliteration.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by namelosw on Saturday August 17, 2019 @07:09AM (#20723365)
Yes, Most of the time 可 means 'able' in '__able'.

But it could also be 'a thing that can be easily loved'. Rr simply, 'pleasing'. For example, 可口 means tasty. So, 可爱 could be understood in both ways actually.

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