[OT?] What is a kawanaga? (I'm Japanese!)

[Syunsuke]

What is a KAWANAGA?
3e OA says a kawanaga is a "chain with weight and sharp grappling hook".
Many Japanese-theam or Oriental-theam RPG also describe similarly.
So, I know this word is supposed to be "hook with rope" and ,less confidently, Japanese word.

I'm Japanese. I live in here over 25 years and I use Japanese everyday.
But I don't know this word; kawanaga.
I konw no Japanese dictinaly that include KAWANAGA as hook with rope.
I think no Japanese (except some RPG player like me) know what KAWANAGA is.

I'm curious. I want to know several things;

1. Is there non-RPG Japanese dictionaly that translate KAWANAGA as hook with rope?
2. Is there non-Japanese (but probably oriental) word, KAWANAGA, that means hook with rope?
3. When and where was KAWANAGA used as hook with rope first?
4. Why is this mysteryous word so prevailing?

Thank you in advance.
I have a posseble etymology of KAWANAGA and will sugest it in next post.



tleilaxu : Thank you for correcting my english.

 

[Bastoche]

Oriental-oriented RPGs tend to make a special blend of every eastern asian culture. Maybe the word is chinese or korean or else.

 

[Jeph]

I doubt it's chinese, all chinese words are monosylibic.

 

[BenBrown]

Doesn't sound particularly Korean either.

Possibly a bit further south. OE takes stuff from all over south and east asia, despite the heavily quasi-Japanese flavor. Or it could just be a misprint that someone read somewhere which has taken on a life of its own.

 

[alsih2o]

The kawanaga is a grappling hook with one to three prongs attached to a rope. Besides its obvious use, ninja learn to use it as a weapon, though as all multipurpose devices it is not as effective as a dedicated weapon.


i found this same lame description on several sites that were about "ninjas" and had nothing to do with d+d....

 

[tleilaxu]

I doubt it's chinese, all chinese words are monosylibic.

oh really?




edit: Syunsuke. The correct english is "I'm Japanese", not "I'm a Japanese."

 

[alsih2o]

oh really?

tleilaxu, don't you realize that anagama and noborigama and bejing are all just one sylable words cleverly disguised at polysyllabic?

 

[tleilaxu]

I'm just surprised how many China experts we have here at ENworld.

 

[Balgus]

alsih20:
don't you realize that anagama and noborigama and bejing are all just one sylable words cleverly disguised at polysyllabic

Actually, all chinese (and vietnamese if anyone cares) pronounced correctly are monosyllabic. But in order to describe something, they usually link 2 or more words together to get a name. Each word has a meaning, and combined, makes a distinct name.

I can't give you any chinese examples (ancestors lived in Vietnam and I grew up in US) but am fluent with Vietnamese. Like Nguyen (pronounced ngweeng) is usually americanized as nu-jen.

And then there are proper nouns like city names that are not monosyllabic- but that is because they are combination of words used as a description.
But then there is Saigon, which I don't know the roots of, but I am sure that has its origins in France (since the Orient was a colony of france for 100 years).

 

[tarchon]

It sounds like Karatechopanese.