What's the origin of 助 (saving)?


I am a beginner in Japanese and learning Kanji through Anki (Kanji Damage
deck). I came across a word 助言{じょげん} while learning 言.

I want to know from where does the 助 kanji come from?

I searched for etymology and what I get is, 力 clearly stands for strength.
While 且 stands for one of the two things, altar or erect penis.

If I go with the former origin for 且, does the Kanji mean, saving someone from
death (altar symbolising death, saving someone from death using strength).

Am I correct to interpret it that way? Or does the it have some other meaning?

When I searched for etymology of 助 on
[Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8A%A9), it gives me:

> Phono-semantic compound (形聲, OC *zras): phonetic 且 ‎(OC *sʰjaːʔ, >*ʔsa) +
> semantic 力 ‎(“strong arm”) – to help with one’s strength.

When I searched for etymology of 助 on
[ChineseEtymology](http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?submitButton1=Etymology&characterInput=%E5%8A%A9),
it gives something similar:

> From strength 力 (to help with) and phonetic 且. Meaning to help.

Does this mean, "saving" as a spoken word borrowed sound from 且 and used usual
sound for 力? If I am correct in assuming that, is this common?




Imagine you are an ancient Chinese scribe. You want to write the word "to
help, to assist", which was something like _dzryo_ (modern Chinese _zhù_ ,
Japanese _jo_ ). However, there's no character for it. You could create a new
one—perhaps a picture of a stick figure helping another; but that's kinda
abstract and hard to depict as a drawing. Readers might interpret the new
character as "friendship" or "embrace" or "hired work" or a zillion other
things.

So you use a sound-based borrowing, or **rebus**. Where you want to write "to
help", _dzryo_ , you draw the character for "altar", 且 _tsyo_ (modern _jù, cù_
( _tsù_ ), Japanese _so_ ), because it sounds like "to help". This is just
like drawing a to write the word "I", or a tin can to write the verb "can".
Your readers read it aloud and, in context, they know what you meant.

Your notation is successful; so much that people start to write 且 meaning "to
help" all the time. But now a new problem appears. Someone writes "I need 且",
and it's not clear whether they mean helpers, or altars. Writing has grown
ambiguous. So you disambiguate it by the following device: whenever you mean
"to help" you add the "strength" character—a biceps カ—besides it. Now you have
a composite "multimedia" character, so to speak. In 助、 the 且 part suggests the
sound ("something like _so_ "), and the 力 part suggests the general meaning
("has to do with strength") = _jo_ "to help". This is called a **phono-
semantic compound** 形声文字{けいせいもじ}. The sound hint is called the "phonetic
component" or simply the "phonetic" 音符{おんぷ}. The meaning hint is called the
"semantic component" 意符{いふ}.

This process was _extremely_ common, and the result is that most characters
are phono-semantic compounds—up to 90% of them, by Karlgren's count (though
many sound-hints and meaning-hints have become obsolete, as words have changed
significantly, and the shapes of the characters too).

That being said, in many cases the sound-hint works as a second meaning-hint,
too. All of 包泡胞砲 are pronounced _hō_ , so clearly 包 was chosen as a phonetic.
However, it's easy to imagine bubbles 泡 as water packages 水+包, cells 胞 as
flesh packages 肉+包, (ancient) bullets 砲 as stone packages, etc. They could
have chosen any character pronounced _hō_ as the phonetic for those words; but
they appear to have chosen one whose meaning also made sense. This appears to
be relatively common (the technical term is "meaning-combining phono-semantic
compound 会意形声文字{かいいけいせいもじ}).

Is 助 a meaning-combining character? That is, did the person who created it aim
at a semantic use of 且—perhaps thinking of ritual altar helpers, or something?
Or was 且 a purely phonetic choice (which is also common)? The truth is,
**nobody knows**. We have no documentation of their rationale; it's easy to
speculate semantic associations, but hard to find proof. This has been the
source of many bitter arguments among linguists. We're not even sure whether
the original meaning of 且 was really "altar", or their old pronunciations. The
above are current best informed guesses (my source for the reconstructed
sounds is Baxter–Sargat's research).

But of course you are allowed to think of it as "saving from altar death", as
a mnemonic, if you find it helpful. Your mnemonics don't have to follow
historical truth. Even in East Asia, many characters were reanalyzed at later
periods. For example, 東 "East" was originally built from 束 "bundle" for
phonetic reasons; but nowadays most people interpret it as "the sun 日 rising
behind a tree 木", even in China and Japan. Whatever works for you—just be sure
to distinguish easy-to-remember mnemonic stories from often-confusing actual
history.




Imagine you are an ancient Chinese scribe. You want to write the word "to
help, to assist", which was something like _dzryo_ (modern Chinese _zhù_ ,
Japanese _jo_ ). However, there's no character for it. You could create a new
one—perhaps a picture of a stick figure helping another; but that's kinda
abstract and hard to depict as a drawing. Readers might interpret the new
character as "friendship" or "embrace" or "hired work" or a zillion other
things.

So you use a sound-based borrowing, or **rebus**. Where you want to write "to
help", _dzryo_ , you draw the character for "altar", 且 _tsyo_ (modern _jù, cù_
( _tsù_ ), Japanese _so_ ), because it sounds like "to help". This is just
like drawing a to write the word "I", or a tin can to write the verb "can".
Your readers read it aloud and, in context, they know what you meant.

Your notation is successful; so much that people start to write 且 meaning "to
help" all the time. But now a new problem appears. Someone writes "I need 且",
and it's not clear whether they mean helpers, or altars. Writing has grown
ambiguous. So you disambiguate it by the following device: whenever you mean
"to help" you add the "strength" character—a biceps カ—besides it. Now you have
a composite "multimedia" character, so to speak. In 助、 the 且 part suggests the
sound ("something like _so_ "), and the 力 part suggests the general meaning
("has to do with strength") = _jo_ "to help". This is called a **phono-
semantic compound** 形声文字{けいせいもじ}. The sound hint is called the "phonetic
component" or simply the "phonetic" 音符{おんぷ}. The meaning hint is called the
"semantic component" 意符{いふ}.

This process was _extremely_ common, and the result is that most characters
are phono-semantic compounds—up to 90% of them, by Karlgren's count (though
many sound-hints and meaning-hints have become obsolete, as words have changed
significantly, and the shapes of the characters too).

That being said, in many cases the sound-hint works as a second meaning-hint,
too. All of 包泡胞砲 are pronounced _hō_ , so clearly 包 was chosen as a phonetic.
However, it's easy to imagine bubbles 泡 as water packages 水+包, cells 胞 as
flesh packages 肉+包, (ancient) bullets 砲 as stone packages, etc. They could
have chosen any character pronounced _hō_ as the phonetic for those words; but
they appear to have chosen one whose meaning also made sense. This appears to
be relatively common (the technical term is "meaning-combining phono-semantic
compound 会意形声文字{かいいけいせいもじ}).

Is 助 a meaning-combining character? That is, did the person who created it aim
at a semantic use of 且—perhaps thinking of ritual altar helpers, or something?
Or was 且 a purely phonetic choice (which is also common)? The truth is,
**nobody knows**. We have no documentation of their rationale; it's easy to
speculate semantic associations, but hard to find proof. This has been the
source of many bitter arguments among linguists. We're not even sure whether
the original meaning of 且 was really "altar", or their old pronunciations. The
above are current best informed guesses (my source for the reconstructed
sounds is Baxter–Sargat's research).

But of course you are allowed to think of it as "saving from altar death", as
a mnemonic, if you find it helpful. Your mnemonics don't have to follow
historical truth. Even in East Asia, many characters were reanalyzed at later
periods. For example, 東 "East" was originally built from 束 "bundle" for
phonetic reasons; but nowadays most people interpret it as "the sun 日 rising
behind a tree 木", even in China and Japan. Whatever works for you—just be sure
to distinguish easy-to-remember mnemonic stories from often-confusing actual
history.

