算盤

Noun

 * 1)  abacus
 * 2)  plan; plan of action; master plan

Etymology 1
Japanese sources consistently describe the abacus itself as being imported to Japan from China some time during the (1336–1573), although there is some disagreement as to whether this happened early in the period, or late.

First attested with the reading soroban in the 1595 trilingual Latin-Portuguese-Japanese dictionary Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, Ac Iaponicum, also based on work originally by, corroborated in the  of 1603.

Japanese sources generally describe the soroban reading as a shift or corruption from the reading swanpan, the for the kanji spelling. However, this is problematic on phonological grounds:


 * There is no known phonological process whereby swan would become soro in Japanese.
 * Middle Chinese swan consistently became Japanese san in all other known instances of the Chinese reading swan for any kanji character.
 * The character appearing as the first character in  is also read as san, and san is similarly listed as a synonym for soroban in the 1595 dictionary entry.

An alternative, albeit speculative, explanation is that this soro- is some other morpheme unrelated to the Chinese. If so, this might be native root soro-, as seen in adverb, and , verb.

Notably, this term appears historically with the alternative kanji spelling. Given the expected Japanese readings of these characters, this may have been read as saraban. Root sara- -- and also root suru- -- also appear in various terms related to senses of.

Noun

 * 1) 　 an abacus

Etymology 2


Ultimately from. Compare modern 🇨🇬 reading sǹg-pôaⁿ, 🇨🇬 suànpán.

Japanese sources consistently describe the abacus itself as being imported to Japan from China some time during the (1336–1573), although there is some disagreement as to whether this happened early in the period, or late.

First attested with the reading sanban to a text from 1688.

Noun

 * 1)   a kind of grid used in  to calculate higher-order functions
 * 2)   an abacus