惑星 it is! Fortunately, 遊星 has already served its function in teaching me the on-yomi for 遊ぶ, so I can toss it out without any worries.

The connection between wandering and playing makes sense to me. The image of an exhausted parent chasing a toddler around a grocery store comes to mind :)

>Which word is more common in Japanese: 遊星 or 惑星?
I’m afraid 惑星 is far more common. Probably in large part because 遊星 has so many homynyms (like 優勢、優性、幽棲、郵政、有声、有性、幽静), whereas 惑星 is unique-sounding.

Oh, also it recently came to my attention that 遊, while it now mainly means “play”, can also carry a meaning of “wandering”, as in 遊牧 (ゆうぼく nomadic, pastoral). Isn’t it great that “play” is related to the idea of wandering, as if to say that playing is going and doing and learning whenever, wherever and whatever you want?

Totally rambling. Anyway, later…

Good call on the wandering star. It makes perfect sense. And it’s pretty cool to think that the ancient Greeks and Chinese thought of the planets in the same way, although I guess without telescopes that would be the obvious way to think about them. But still, the naming is so close.

I didn’t even know how to say planet before I watched this chapter. Which word is more common in Japanese: 遊星 or 惑星? I kinda like 遊星. I have this entry in my SRS, 遊泳禁止 (no swimming), but I always miss it because I can never remember the on-yomi for 遊ぶ. Now with 遊星 I have another 遊 word stuck in my word connection web so I’ll probably never miss it again. Thanks.

I looked up some more words. Meteor is 流星 an meteor shower is 流星雨. Red Giant is 赤色巨星.

And no, none of what you said was too obvious, at least not to me. About 98% of the information in your comment was new to me so I learned a lot. I didn’t know that you could refer to planets as just 星. I didn’t know the word for asteroid either. I’m in that awkward “Intermediate” phase of Japanese learning where I’ve mastered all the basics but I don’t know any words. Everything is vocabulary building.

Pali is going great. It’s going much faster than I expected. The Buddha’s sermons are really well-suited for language learning. I don’t know if you’ve ever read excerpts from the Tipitika before, but it has lots and lots (and lots) of repetition. Before the canon was written down it was transmitted orally, so the monks used to keep the whole thing in their head. That’s why there’s so much repetition – to facilitate memorization. If you read a random passage in the Tipitika, it might go a little like this:

“The untamed mind, O monks, leads to great disadvantage.
The tamed mind, O monks, leads to great advantage.
The unguarded mind, O monks, leads to great disadvantage.
The guarded mind, O monks, leads to great advantage.
The unwatched mind, O monks, leads to great disadvantage.
The watched mind, O monks leads to great advantage.
The unrestrained mind, O monks, leads to great disadvantage.
The restrained mind, O monks leads to great advantage.
I do not, O monks, perceive one single thing that when untamed, unguarded, unwatched and unrestrained leads to such great disadvantage as the mind. The mind, monks, untamed, unguarded, unwatched and unrestrained leads to great disadvantage.”

When reading/learning a passage like this, it’s almost impossible not to pick up the words for monk, mind, great, advantage, disadvantage, tamed, untamed, guarded, unguarded, etc.

Love the blog. Really funny. Good job on the mumbling — that’s EXACTLY how men sound!
“詳しいことぁこいん書いったる” and stuff.

On 惑星, I think the reason it’s called that iiiiiis the same reason as in English. AFAIK, planet is from Greek and means “wandering [star]” see dictionary for details. So 惑星 is a star that bewildered astronomers because it doesn’t stay in place? Or that is bewildered and confused and is therefore wandering? Something like that.

Note that in Sino-Japanese, a regular star is 恒星 “fixed-star” or “constant-star”. Also note that the other name for a planet is 遊星 (“playful-star” or “playing-star”).
Oh, and — you probably already know this, but — both stars and planets can be called 星 (ほし), at least if my thousands of hours of sci-fi watching are anything to go by.
BTW, Chinese prefers “行星” (xing2xing1)/”moving-star” to 惑星, although both terms will work, according to my dictionary [it looks to me that the general practice in Greater China is, essentially, to recognize Japanese-made kanji-combinations as valid, even if they don't get used much; furthermore, some Japanese-made actual kanji have even come into Chinese, like 鯰 ...but I could be wrong].

Um…what else…yeah — asteroids are 小惑星, small-planets.

OK, I’m done. Hope that helped. Sorry if it was already obvious. Plus, I hope I’m actually right about all the stuff I said (lol).

How’s Pali going? You’re such a baller for studying that!