So, according to Wiktionary, 感じ is the stem form of the verb 感じる, which used to be 感ずる, which comes from 感 + する with rendaku, where 感 is a Chinese loanword for "feeling".
So Japanese when from 感 (feeling) to 感じ (feeling) by first making it a verb and then turning it back lmao
Edit: I'm not trying to imply that this is unique or super special, I just thought it was a fun fact
This is such an odd framing.
many such cases.
There is some subtle semantic divergence, though.
On the whole, 感 represents one's internal feeling. Dictionaries tend to use definitions like "心に感じること" or "心の動き".
感じ, on the other hand, generally represents the feeling or sensation of an external stimulus. Definitions tend to include "物に触れた時" or "物事に接して".
感に?
I didn't know they could rendaku する!
Its not rendaku afaict, jiru and zuru are different alternative verbs from older japanese forms that stick around in some cases
する -> ずる is textbook rendaku. ずる -> じる is a more irregular sound change that happened relatively recently (within the last 200 years IIRC).
It's still considered rendaku. It's rendakuing because of the preceding nasal sound in /kaN/ making the following sound voiced (you'll notice all じる/ずる verbs have a nasal sound preceding them in the Middle Chinese pronunciation, corresponding to い/う/ん/む in Japanese. Some suspect these い/う codas were originally nasalized in Japanese when first imported).
感+する→感ずる→感じる
is a correct etymology. The shift from ずる to じる is just a change in the conjugational class of the verb.
I think on the Wikipedia page for Japanese verbs there should be a whole bunch of verbs like these. I think 信じる is the same.
In addition, adjective+感じがする is commonly used in casual speaking instead of adverb+感じる.
Huh? Ok, what about. 用する、知る、勉強する、禁じる、信じる? It’s a feature not a bug.
I think OP’s point is that 用じ、勉強じ、禁じ etc. are not common nouns, but 感じ is. So, that is interesting in a way.
Ok, well, I’ve done both Chinese and Japanese and some very in-depth work on the way characters were adopted and then adapted for writing Japanese, and it doesn’t strike me as weird at all, just part of the way Japanese uses 漢字, which is either phonetic or based on meaning, or a combination of both. But hey if you want to spend your time on marveling about how this panned out be my guest. Plenty more examples.
I don’t think it is weird or marvel at it; I agree it is a natural result of how 漢字 are used.
That said, I wasn’t immediately able to think of another example of (kanji)+じ arising from じる and becoming a common noun. After some more thought, I came up with 通じ and 綴じ. Do you have any more?
Anyways, this is definitely just a curiosity, and an excuse to think about vocabulary.
Actually I was wrong. 綴じ(とじ) is not a good example because とじる is a native Japanese reading, it is not a 漢語動詞.