Talk:猫

Is it more common to use the kanji or just hiragana to write this in Japanese? Just wondering. --64.58.17.143 02:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The kanji would be the most frequent, but the hiragana and katakana are also common enough. --Tohru 22:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Graphical significance/etymology

Why is "rice field" and "grass/vegetable" included in this character's spelling, in addition to the "animal" radical? 24.29.238.60 17:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You are dividing the character into too many pieces. While the "animal" radical (犭) is correct, the rest needs to be interpreted as a single character: 苗. Like the majority of Chinese characters, this one too is composed of a radical indicating the semantic category (animal) and a character approximating the phonetic pronunciation (苗). Thus, you may interpret it as "an animal pronounced miu [or miao]", hence expressing the word for "cat" in Chinese. Be aware that the phonetic approximation becomes less accurate over time as languages change, as well as being borrowed into other languages (Korean, Japanese etc). For more info, see this. Bendono 00:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

This radical 犭is as more accurately as "Mammal" indeed.Anhmytran (talk)

Ehm... I've learned that the cat was sent by farmers to hunt for mice on their fields. So, that's why. 86.84.56.169 15:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)