The kanji 辛 used as a component.

The kanji 辛 has the well known kun-yomi of から・い meaning spicy or hot.
Furthermore, the on-yomi is sometimes used in words seen in cooking recipes like
香辛料 コウシンリョウ with the meaning of spices (aroma and spicy ingredients)

When trying to remember this word I noticed this on-yomi of SHIN made me think of some other characters using the same on-yomi like 新(new) and 親(parent) which looks pretty similar to 辛.

When checking out the components on KanjiABC I found that the only common characters with the on-yomi of SHIN and the 立  as a component is the ones mentioned 辛新親 and also 薪(たきぎ) which means fire-wood. So maybe the left component of 親 and 新 is connected to 辛.

According to Zhongwen.com the left part is a combination of 辛 and 木 which give the meaning of wood that hurts.

That means the supposed etymology for 親 is then on-looker and punisher for wrong-doing or the one looking and correcting what was wrong 辛 was the role of the parent and 新 probably meant a newly painfully newly cut wood.

Kanji that hide something away

I decided to take JLPT N2 recently and to prepare for the test I bought the new kanzen master vocabulary for JLPT N2 (新完全マスター 語彙日本語能力試験Ｎ２) book which puts the vocabulary in different groups which make learning vocabulary easier and more fun.

At the same time I put in the vocabulary in Anki for training writing kanji, where I came across the following two kanji that looks similair 穏 and 隠. The first one was used for [おだ]穏やかな and describes a persons strong point for someone who is calm and mild inside. The second one describes what a person is doing which in this case is hiding a secret away ([ひみつ]秘密を[かく]隠す).

The etymology for these two kanji are closely tied together according to the kanji etymology book 漢字源. 穏 shows two hands (爪 and 又) cowering an object 工 which is the original usage of 隠 now written with a cliff on the left side to maybe show something hidden in the mountains. The thing on the left side of 穏 is an object which gives the meaning to hide an object away with the extended meaning hiding one's true feelings and staying calm which is considered good in any social environment. However, there is also another interpretation of 穏 that seems more obvious and easier to remember that the right side shows keep something inside one's heart which is the seed 禾 for losing one's temper.

Different kinds of Noun modifiers (名詞修飾)

After reading a power point presentation about 名詞修飾 (Noun Modifiers) written by Noda 2009 I got some new insights into how noun modifiers work. It is available on google by searching using 名詞修飾型とは as a keyword.

Noun modifiers in Japanese language is always before the Noun being modified and good understanding is essential in order to read Japanese fast. One example from the book "Rapid Reading Japanese" is 日本の俳句のことについて書かれたとても面白い本 which means interesting book about haiku.

There are in particular three different kinds of Noun modifiers. Using simplified definitions from Nodas presentation they are the attributive noun modifier (属性名詞修飾), state noun modifier (状態名詞修飾) and cause noun modifier (理由名詞修飾). The attributive describes what the noun is, while the state describes what time, place and condition the noun has. The cause noun modifier is rarely seen and describes a sentence which describes the cause why something is happening.

To give an example with all three in action I provide another example from "Rapid Reading Japanese":
昨日サントリーホールへオペラを聴きに行った。ドミンゴが出る「オテロ」というオペラで、本当に素晴らしかった。今プラシード・ドミンゴは世界最高のテノールと言われているオペラ歌手だ。チケットはなかなか買えないということだったが、当日キャンセルされたチケットが安く手に入った。とてもラッキーだった。

The first two noun modifiers describes attributes; the third one describe state; the fourth one describe cause.