Thread:Old McDonald/@comment-24259054-20140809184258/@comment-26199823-20140915231349

Old McDonald wrote: Hm... It's really difficult. The problem is that "子" has many meanings. "Child" is the meaning of the character, but it can be used for different purposes. For example, as a suffix it can turn the word into a noun, then it means "thing" (potentially with the connotation "small", but it doesn't need to be so). So for example "振子" means "an object that swings" or a pendulum. Or you could also interpret "子" as "offshoot".

What makes that whole situation even weirder is that Ishida went for a rare reading of the character. The reading he went with is "ne", but this character is typically read as "ko", "go" or "shi".

I can't really judge what is the meaning Ishida intended. But imho, "child" is strange. I agree with you.