In Mandarin Chinese, 忆 (Pinyin: yì 🔊) is a verb “to remember”, “to reminisce”, “to reflect upon” or a noun for “memory”.
忆 is a simplified form of the traditional character 憶. According to Wiktionary, 憶 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 忄, a radical form of 心 “heart”, and phonetic 意 (Pinyin: yì) which also contains 心. So we can say that there are two hearts in 憶. In the simplified form, 意 got replaced by unrelated but similarly-sounding 乙 (yǐ). You may remember that the same story happened with 亿 (← 億).
Compounds of 忆 include
- 回 “to return” + 忆 = 回忆 (huíyì 🔊): memory, to remember
- 失 “to lose” + 忆 = 失忆 (shīyì): to lose memory
- 记 “to record” + 忆 = 记忆 (jìyì 🔊): to remember, to recall
- 记忆 + 力 “strength” = 记忆力 (jìyìlì): ability to remember; memory
In Japanese, 憶 could be rendered as either おく (oku) or おもう (omou 🔊).
夏燕 金子
natsu tsubame tani yukeri kioku chiri yukeri a summer swallow Kaneko * |
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* Kaneko Tohta, Selected Haiku, Part 2: 1961—2012. Red Moon Press, 2012, p. 63.
