66673
Learning the time of day I found that 朝 or あさ means morning, 昼 or ひる means
afternoon, and 晚 I expected to be night but Google translate is saying it's
moth for some reason. Does this 晚 only mean night when paired with certain
characters?
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2019-04-18T17:42:33.080
66672
2019-04-18T23:57:29.780
32971
question
kanji time
Morning, Afternoon, Night Kanji
Google Translate, and indeed just about any machine translation engine, is
still often shit for the Japanese ↔ English language pair. **Do not** rely on
Google Translate to learn another language, especially when looking at a
single word.

Here are some time-of-day terms:

  * 朝【あさ】 = "morning"
  * 昼【ひる】 = "day, afternoon"
  * 晩【ばん】 = "evening"
  * 夜【よる】 = "late evening, night"

See also this recent post: [What's the difference among 夜中, 真夜中 and
夜?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/66662)

**PS:** For what it's worth, the actual word for "moth" is 蛾【が】. I recommend
that you use any of various online dictionaries when exploring a single word.
Here are some freebies:

  * [Weblio Japanese ↔ English](https://ejje.weblio.jp/)
  * [Kotobank](https://kotobank.jp/) (geared for native Japanese readers, but still offering some Japanese ↔ English content)
  * [Jisho.org](https://jisho.org/) (sometimes a bit dodgy, make sure to cross-check)
  * [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/) (full disclosure: I've helped edit a lot of the Japanese entries)

### Digression, and example of the perils of machine translation

The original post included the kanji 晚, technically [Unicode codepoint
665A](http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=665A).

![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Gw_u665a.svg)

The above is the 旧【きゅう】字【じ】体【たい】 or "old form" of the 新【しん】字【じ】体【たい】 or "new
form" kanji 晩, technically [Unicode codepoint
6669](http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=6669).

![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Gw_u6669.svg)

[Google Translate (mostly) correctly translates the _shinjitai_ kanji as
"night"](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ja&tl=en&text=%E6%99%A9).

[![Correct translation when using
U+6669](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MnKOm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MnKOm.png)

However, even though the _kyūjitai_ character **has the same meaning** ,
[Google mistranslates this as "moth" if the source language is set to
Japanese](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ja&tl=en&text=%E6%99%9A).

[![Mistranslation of U+665A when source language is set to
"Japanese"](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p9NE2.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p9NE2.png)

When auto-detected, Google [on my machine, anyway] [identifies this as Chinese
and translates it as
"late"](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%E6%99%9A).

[![Correct translation of U+665A when source language is auto-detected as
"Chinese"](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5brVa.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5brVa.png)

Truly, _[caveat](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caveo#Verb)
[usuarius](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/usuarius#Noun)_.
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2019-04-18T18:14:27.897
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2019-04-18T23:57:29.780
2019-04-18T23:57:29.780
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answer