[Multilingual Monday] 宛字
Today, after far too long on hiatus, we have another MM! Hey, LJ is one of the few outlets I have for language musings.
One of the biggest mistakes I think I've made while learning Japanese is assuming that each character, no matter what, had a specific meaning no matter what, and this is completely wrong. Because Japanese had a very heavy Chiense influence (and, in fact, was written at one point in only Chinese characters, with strings of character being used for pronunciation and not the character's meaning). And that is what we're covering today -- ateji. Ateji are Chinese characters used regardless of meaning, but "sound out" concepts. In this day it's a bit pointless, since Japanese has TWO phonetic scripts, but several instances still prevail of this usage.
Some very Japanese concepts, interestingly, are "sounded out" in ateji. 寿司, sushi, sounds out "su" and "shi," but have nothing to do with food whatsoever. 歌舞伎, kabuki, is also not indicative of the actual etymology of the word at all ("song, dance, skill" vs kabuku, "to be out of the ordinary"). Foreign locales used to be written out primarily in ateji too, giving 亜細亜, "Asia" (with charactes meaning "subpar thin subpar"); 英吉利, England ("heroic good-luck benefit"); 和蘭, Holland ("Peace Orchid"); 巴里, Paris ("whirlpool mile"). Most of these aren't used anymore, but as I said. a few linger -- see club, 倶楽部, and 合羽, raincot (kappa in Japanese).
There, incidentally, seems to be some odd thing with Japanese given names. I've seen names that are standard words -- Yuki, for example, which means "snow," but rather than use 雪, I have seen two ateji characters instead. Apparently there is some belief in the number of strokes in a person's name giving some kind of fortune, hence the practice. Just what is lucky? It seems to be open to debate. On a forum where I tried to understand this myself a Japanese man said:
I am Japanese, and I know my parents did not check the kanji stroke count when they named me lol, they took the name whose sound they liked and kanji they liked that went with it, so some people select kanji based on completely different things :) Some couples take one kanji out of, for example, the father's or other relative's name.
Even for Japanese nationals, the "lucky" stroke count and kanji selection is often an issue that we consult experts on. To be honest I do not know what "number" is considered lucky - I think it's more the balance between the family name and the given name. In that sense, yes, the count of the whole name matters.
By all means, I'd love to hear your stories about ateji, or even the practice in languages like Chinese (where you don't have a frequently-used phoentic system to fall back on).
One of the biggest mistakes I think I've made while learning Japanese is assuming that each character, no matter what, had a specific meaning no matter what, and this is completely wrong. Because Japanese had a very heavy Chiense influence (and, in fact, was written at one point in only Chinese characters, with strings of character being used for pronunciation and not the character's meaning). And that is what we're covering today -- ateji. Ateji are Chinese characters used regardless of meaning, but "sound out" concepts. In this day it's a bit pointless, since Japanese has TWO phonetic scripts, but several instances still prevail of this usage.
Some very Japanese concepts, interestingly, are "sounded out" in ateji. 寿司, sushi, sounds out "su" and "shi," but have nothing to do with food whatsoever. 歌舞伎, kabuki, is also not indicative of the actual etymology of the word at all ("song, dance, skill" vs kabuku, "to be out of the ordinary"). Foreign locales used to be written out primarily in ateji too, giving 亜細亜, "Asia" (with charactes meaning "subpar thin subpar"); 英吉利, England ("heroic good-luck benefit"); 和蘭, Holland ("Peace Orchid"); 巴里, Paris ("whirlpool mile"). Most of these aren't used anymore, but as I said. a few linger -- see club, 倶楽部, and 合羽, raincot (kappa in Japanese).
There, incidentally, seems to be some odd thing with Japanese given names. I've seen names that are standard words -- Yuki, for example, which means "snow," but rather than use 雪, I have seen two ateji characters instead. Apparently there is some belief in the number of strokes in a person's name giving some kind of fortune, hence the practice. Just what is lucky? It seems to be open to debate. On a forum where I tried to understand this myself a Japanese man said:
I am Japanese, and I know my parents did not check the kanji stroke count when they named me lol, they took the name whose sound they liked and kanji they liked that went with it, so some people select kanji based on completely different things :) Some couples take one kanji out of, for example, the father's or other relative's name.
Even for Japanese nationals, the "lucky" stroke count and kanji selection is often an issue that we consult experts on. To be honest I do not know what "number" is considered lucky - I think it's more the balance between the family name and the given name. In that sense, yes, the count of the whole name matters.
By all means, I'd love to hear your stories about ateji, or even the practice in languages like Chinese (where you don't have a frequently-used phoentic system to fall back on).