Ateji

Ateji (Japanese当て字) are Chinese characters or kanji that are used by the designation of terms without regard to their actual meaning only the pronunciation in Japanese language. The counterpart to the ateji that are special readings for existing character combinations are the Jukujikun.

Survey

A basic application of Ateiji is the case of Japanese proper names, place names, etc., with Chinese characters. Thus, there are for the male first name " Takashi " more than 40 variants, which can be written in kanji. For field names of Mount Fuji is a prominent ateji example. Dating from the Ainu language word is written with two characters meaning " noble gentleman ". The same is true for names like Karuizawa ( " Bimssumpf " ) or Kamakura ( " sickle memory "), which are ateji. In this group also includes place names, which are written at the end with the characters for " door ", which are used only to play sound " to".

Also, many border and place names have been reproduced with ateji. Leading the way were the Jesuits in China in the creation of world maps in Chinese language, eg Matteo Ricci. The Japanese took these spellings largely, eg 伯林·柏林for Berlin, although the Japanese pronunciation Hakurin is far away from China, about " Bolin " is. Next there are occasional significant differences in the character choice in the country name. While our country is referred to by the Chinese as " Deguo " = "virtue country," Japan used in the historical Kanji letters独 逸doitsu for Germany. The first character means "alone", the second, among other " escape " or " wander ". Both are used but phonetically in this case to simulate the word " German ".

Use of ateji are old loanwords that do not come from the Chinese, such as food or merchandise from the first contact with Europeans in the 16th century. An example is " Tempura " (天 麸 罗) for the former fast food (fried fish, shrimp and vegetables) of the Portuguese. These characters were chosen after the reading.

Putting the meaning in order to get to character for tobacco,烟草meaning " smoke grass ". They are here, " tabako " spoken and not " kemuri - kusa " as it corresponds to the character. Sometimes both, for example, succeeds in the ( deprecated ) case for kurabu, "club". The characters倶 楽 部can as ku - ra ( ku ) - bu be read, meaning roughly "Together - fun - place ".

Some ateji have also been invented by shopkeepers to make their product appear in a better light by using characters with the appropriate reading, but a more positive meaning, see, eg, Sushi (寿司). 寿means " long life "司really "official".

In modern Japanese, since the writing reform in 1946, katakana are exclusively used to write foreign words. Most ateji are therefore not used in normal usage. Only in a few words that were so firmly anchored in the language that they are no longer perceived as a foreign word as tabako is still written in Kanji, or when the characters are too complicated in Hiragana.

The abbreviation for country names (for example独for Germany ) that are used in compound words (for example日 独 关系Nichidoku kankei " Japanese- German relations " ), go directly back to the ancient ateji spellings of country names. Other examples are a亜for Asia, derived from亜 细 亜Ajia, and米in for America, derived from亜 米利加America. (see list of country names in Japanese )

• Kanji