In modern
Japanese, principally refers to
kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
used to phonetically represent native or
borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Old Ja ...
. Conversely, also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.
For example, the word "
sushi
is a traditional Japanese dish made with , typically seasoned with sugar and salt, and combined with a variety of , such as seafood, vegetables, or meat: raw seafood is the most common, although some may be cooked. While sushi comes in n ...
" is often written with its . Though the two characters have the readings and respectively, the character means "one's natural life span" and means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. as a means of representing
loanword
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
s has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of , although many coined in earlier eras still linger on.
Usage
today are used conventionally for certain words, such as ('sushi'), though these words may be written in
hiragana
is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...
(especially for native words), or
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).
The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
(especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. are particularly common on traditional store signs and menus. For example, "
tempura" may be written as . The Japanese loanword for "coffee" is generally written using the katakana , but on coffee shop signs and menus it may be written with the Chinese word , which is then pronounced irregularly to their normal Japanese reading (their ). In particular, ''ateji'' are frequently employed in manga and song lyrics by pairing kanji with
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana (syllabic characters) printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also know ...
for creative effect and to add layers of meaning.
Many characters have gained meanings derived from usage. For example, were once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the used to write "
Asia
Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
". The original word is now considered archaic, but the character has gained the meaning "Asia" in such compounds as , even though originally meant "sub-par" (and continues to). From the , the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage , which literally translates to "rice country" but means "
United States of America
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...
"; however, remains in far more common use in modern Japanese. Major
natural gas
Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...
companies in Japan use the in their company names, but use the katakana in their trade names.
Phono-semantic matching
When using to represent loanwords, the kanji are sometimes chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of
phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots f ...
. A stock example is () for "
club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together", "fun" and "place". Another example is () for the
Portuguese , a kind of
raincoat. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed resembles a bird with wings folded together.
History
The ad hoc usage of Chinese characters for their phonetic values dates nearly to the introduction of Chinese characters to Japan. Two widespread uses of came out of this. On one front, scholars and monks used kanji characters as translation aids between the lines of Chinese texts. On the other, poets simply used kanji phonetically to write in Japanese. Many different characters were used with the same sound values.
This system of characters is called , "alphabet of myriad leaves". The of modern Japanese, and developed as organic simplifications of that were eventually codified.
are primarily used today for historical terms – in historical order, these are primarily
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
terms dating from the introduction of Buddhism to Japan,
Portuguese terms from the 16th and 17th centuries, and
Dutch terms from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. found some use in the
Meiji period
The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...
and in the 20th century, but has largely been superseded by .
Sanskrit
In
Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
Japanese, Sanskrit terms used in some chants also derive from but were not called such. These Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese (in a Literary Chinese style) in China long ago. The translation rule for mantras was not to translate the mantra, but instead to represent it phonetically with Chinese characters. For the sutras, they were translated into Chinese Literary Language (). The terms () and (), or "perfection of wisdom" and "fully enlightened", both appear in the
Heart Sutra
The ''Heart Sūtra'', ) is a popular sutra in Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism. In Sanskrit, the title ' translates as "The Heart of the Prajnaparamita, Perfection of Wisdom".
The Sutra famously states, "Form is emptiness (''śūnyatā''), em ...
, but are written using .
Related concepts
("Japanese-origin" readings) should not be confused with . Whereas are characters used to represent Japanese or borrowed words without regard to the meaning of those characters, are readings, typically words, of Japanese origin that have been officially applied to the borrowed Chinese characters, similar to Latin-Germanic origin synonyms in
English.
When a native Japanese word is written as a compound by meaning only, and this spelling is established in the language, as in , the word is the semantic variety of , and is known specifically as .
Intentional improvised use of irregular kanji spellings (as opposed to spelling mistakes) are known as , and generally require (notational reading characters) to be read properly. Many may have started out as . A loanword example is reading as the English-derived word , or "rival".
While standardized use , as in having the suffix in order to inflect as for the past tense, only intended for one-off usage need not have sufficient . For example, ("spicy, salty") is an adjective requiring the suffix , but may also be spelt as, for example, (both legitimate of the characters) on a poster, for example, where there is no intention of inflecting this spelling.
Single-character loan words
Most are multi-character, but in rare cases they can be single-character, as in (simplification of , for which is the Chinese-derived pronunciation), used for "can, metal tin" ( originally meaning "metal pot, iron teakettle"). This is classified as .
In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a loan word reading – that is, a character is given a new reading by borrowing a foreign word – though most often these words are written in . The three most notable examples are , , and . (from the Portuguese , "button") and are marginally understood or used in some settings, but most are obscure.
These are classed as of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as , which is the classification used when a loanword term is using existing sounds only (as in "tempura"), or alternatively as a compound with meaning only (as in – the sound cannot be broken down into readings of individual characters). In principle these could be considered as 1-character meaning-only , but because the reading corresponds to a single character, these are considered readings instead. Note that while are generally written as when writing out the word in instead of kanji (being native Japanese), these are generally written as (being foreign borrowings).
Note that numerically, most of these characters are for units, particularly
SI units
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French ), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official st ...
, in many cases using new characters () coined during the
Meiji period
The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...
, such as from "meter" + "thousand"; this character is obscure and not in common use.
Some non-kanji symbols or Latin character abbreviations also have loanword readings, often quite long. A common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading (), while the word "centimeter" is generally written as (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space) and has the seven kana reading (). It can also be written as , as with kilometer above, though this is very rare. Many borrowed measurement terms may be written as tiny
abbreviations stuffed into a single character space called : (for centimeters; ), (for kilo; ), amongst others.
In a few cases, the etymology of a word is unclear, and hence whether the term is a borrowing or not cannot be determined.
There are occasional spellings which derive from (Japanese form of literary Chinese), where the kanji form follows literary Chinese, but the pronunciation follows Japanese. An example of this is writing (, "no, not") before a kanji for a verb, corresponding to the verb inflection () – for example, writing for "not knowing". The word is read as (as if it were a native Japanese verb), though in this case is also a Sino-Japanese word (a noun), read as , meaning "ignorance". These are primarily found in older literature, but are occasionally used in variant spellings of everyday words, such as .
See also
*
Japanese exonyms
* in Chinese
*
Transcription into Chinese characters
Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to '' phonetically'' transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translatio ...
*
Transcription into Japanese
References
Further reading
Painting Worlds and Wordsby Mia Lewis
External links
*
list of single character loan words
{{Japanese language
Japanese words and phrases
Japanese writing system terms
Kanji
Transliteration