Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au> dixit:
>In sci.lang.japan, Bart Mathias <mathias@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>> Ben Finney wrote:
>>> It may help to know that the "honorific お" (お母さん, お弁当) a
n>
>>> the "honorific ご" (ご主人, ごはん) both come from the kanji 

>> 
>> "Come from"?  How could a pure Japanese form come from a kanji?

>Touche'. "[...] both were formerly written with the kanji 御.

"Written with" is not at all the same thing as "come from".
ひがし can be written with the kanji 東, but the word does not
"come from" the kanji.

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学