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Perhaps a dumb question, but something that I was wondering and couldn't find
a clear answer via search. Since 校 is the kanji for school, why do we also
need the kanji for learning 学 to say "school" (学校)? As a westerner, it seems
as though schools always involve learning.

Is there some difference in nuance I'm missing? Is there perhaps a historical
meaning for 校 that is more like place of training or practice, which evolved
into school?
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2014-03-28T14:28:13.630
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kanji etymology history
If 校 is the kanji for school, why do I need 学 to actually say school?
Thousands of Japanese 熟語 were created in this way.

  * 岩石 (がんせき) ≒ 岩 (いわ) (rock)
  * 河川 (かせん) ≒ 川 (かわ) (river)
  * 絵画 (かいが) ≒ 絵 (え) (picture)
  * 自己 (じこ) ≒ 己 (おのれ) (oneself)
  * 身体 (しんたい) ≒ 体 (からだ) (body)

[Japanese Wikipedia
describes](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%86%9F%E8%AA%9E_\(%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97\))
a simple reason for this. One kanji character was not long enough to be
distinguishable with each other when pronounced with on-yomi. There are [only
a few hundred](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/24378/5010) different on-
yomi in use. Naturally, people needed to stack two similar characters to
construct one 熟語 usable in everyday speech.

> 類義語を並列させた構造は非常に数が多い。これは以下のような理由による。
>
>
> 漢語の本家である中国語において、一つ一つの単語は単音節的であり、1字が1語を表現する漢字は原則的に1音節の読みしかもたない。しかしその一方で中国語は古代のものに比べ、音韻がより単純なものへと徐々に変化していった。このような過程で
> **1音節では語の弁別が困難になる** という事態が生じ、その結果、並列構造の漢語は増加し続けてきたという。
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Well, for starters, 校 also has the meaning of "proof" (as in a proof print of
something; not "proof" as in evidence) which is associated with its additional
音読み "きょう".

That aside, 漢語 **very** strongly favors multi-character compounds. With
simpler concepts it therefore makes sense to choose two characters with
similar meanings to convey it, after which one of them can be substituted out
for something more specific (c.f. 学校、高校) or further prefixes and suffixes can
be added (小学校、中学校, etc.).
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2014-03-28T14:43:50.170
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`校` isn't **the** character for "school", it's **a** character for "school".
Here are some of the others: `塾`, `学`, `學`, `宗`, `斈`, `泮`, `黉`, `院`, `黌`, ...

Characters are not a neat logical mapping of one picture to one concept.

In fact characters are not even Japanese, as I'm sure you know.

Characters evolved over **_thousands_** of years in China. This means meanings
changed, characters changed, new concepts were invented or discovered,
characters were adapted, simplified, devised, etc. Probably over and over
again..

The result was characters with multiple meanings and concepts with multiple
characters, sometimes with subtle differences in nuance, other times just used
in different regions or in different eras, etc.

Many compound words also evolved, made of two or more characters.

Then Japan borrowed the Chinese characters both as concepts and as pre-formed
Chinese compound words, adapted to Japanese pronunciation, which is utterly
different to Chinese pronunciation, of which there are many utterly different
kinds.

Characters were adapted to Japanese words, new characters were invented in
Japan, characters changed slightly in how they were written in Japan, new
compounds were created of Japanese parts written in characters, and also of
Chinese parts written in characters.

Meanings and pronunciations and concepts also shifted in the time since Japan
acquired characters.

Then Japanese writing was standardized and simplified, with a smaller number
of characters remaining common compared to the larger set used formerly.

One of the results of this long slow natural process was the two characters
you've noticed which have among their several meanings at least once meaning
that is vaguely similar, with one being used in some rather arbitrary but now
standard ways, and the other used in some other rather arbitrary but now
standard ways.

You can expect this with the majority of the words in all languages of the
world. And you can also expect it for the majority of characters or
hieroglyphs, in languages that use such symbols as part of their writing
systems.
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