What are the different ways 分[ふん] can be used?

Question

I'm putting together stuff teaching its use, as a counter, for minutes, but in looking things up for it, I saw some other uses for it, that got me highly interested like "兄弟分" in connection with family relations, and 3日分の食糧, in relation to a specific portion of something. Unfortunately, the only things I could find that even touched on it, oddly enough, were on here, in other questions. Can anyone tell me more, on the other ways it can be used?

Answer 1

If you simply want an exhaustive list of all the meanings of 分, then you should look into a dictionary, which has all the meanings listed with examples. If this is for a teaching material and you want to explain the meaning behind 分 a little deeper, then we need to look little deeper into the Kanji 分, shall we?

Essentially, this Kanji has one and only one core meaning, and all the other usages are either based upon this meaning or are extended from it. That core meaning is: to divide. Let's see how all commonly used meanings of 分 associates with the idea of division:

分{ふん} meaning "minute (of time)"

This is very straight forward, as a minute is simply a division of an hour, and even the English term "minute" can also mean "little", "fraction" when pronounced as "my-nute" not "mi-nit"

分{わ}かる and 分{わ}ける meaning to "divide" or "breakdown"

分ける is just a verb that means to "divide", and 分かる, being the intransitive version of it, originally means "to divide itself", aka "to breakdown". Then, the meaning got extended and now we say XXが分かる to mean "XX makes sense", which, well, makes sense since if something breaks down for me then I can understand it. If I don't I can ask the person "could you break it down for me a bit more?" for more clarity.

分{ぶん} meaning "portion" or "share"

You've mentioned 三日分 in your question, and yes XX分{ぶん} means the "portion" or the "share" of XX. This is clearly related to the core meaning of division as well so no extra explanations. As such, 三日分の水 would be the water enough for three days, and 六人分のパン would be a six-person-portion bread. (Although it's probably more common to say 六人 前{まえ}, but that's a different topic)

分{ぶん} as used in math

In math, A分のB means the fraction B/A. 二分{ぶん}の一 is 1/2, and 五分の七 is 7/5. Clearly, this is still related to division

本分{ほんぷん}

本分 means your responsibility or your duty. 本 means original (本来, 基本) and 分 is your share of responsibility that you must complete. This is your part, you must do it, so it's your 本分

兄弟分{きょうだいぶん}

兄弟 means brothers and 分 can still be interpreted as their "share of responsibility towards each other." 兄弟分 does not only refer to the two brothers themselves but also their brother-like relationship, which I think is the first meaning of this word, then later it became used to address the people too, not just the relationship. As a side note, there exists a word in Chinese 情分 which is a synonym to 情誼, but only the latter got imported into Japanese 情誼{じょうぎ}

Other uses

There are a lot of other compounds that has 分 but in those ones it's very obvious that 分 is just used to mean to divide and should not cause any confusions

Also 分 is used historically in Japan as a unit of currency and a unit of length, but by the same logic that 分 is a modern unit of time, it is just a division of a larger unit.