Ateji

Ateji ( Japanese. 当 て 字 ) are Chinese characters or Kanji , which are used in the Japanese language to denote terms, regardless of their actual meaning, only according to their pronunciation. The counterpart to the Ateji are the Jukujikun , in which terms with a previously existing pronunciation were assigned a combination of characters regardless of their original pronunciation.

In ancient times , Man'yōgana were used as ateji.

Overview

Basic application

One of the basic uses of Ateiji is the spelling of Japanese proper names, field names etc. with Chinese characters. There are over 40 variants of the male first name “Takashi” that can be written with Kanji. For field names is Mount Fuji 富士（ふ じ）a prominent Ateji example. The word comes from the Ainu language and is written with two characters that mean “Noble Gentleman”. The same goes for place names like Karuizawa (軽 井 沢（か る い ざ わ）, "Pumice swamp") or Kamakura (鎌倉（か ま く ら）, "Sickle store"), which are Ateji. This group also includes place names which are written at the end with the character for “door” 戸 と , which should only reproduce the sound “ to ”.

country names

Many country and place names were also given Ateji. The Jesuits in China pioneered the creation of world maps in Chinese , e.g. B. Matteo Ricci . The Japanese largely adopted these spellings, e.g. B. 伯林 ( 柏林 ), for Berlin, although the kanji Japanese sino-in On-reading " Hakurin " when Japanese Kun-reading " Hakubayashi " or as the Japanese name " Kashiwabayashi read" the debate is far from from Chinese, " Bólín " 柏林 . In fact, for Berlin, the Japanese Ateji is the pronunciation " Berurin "伯林（ベ ル リ ン）. Furthermore, there are occasionally clear differences in the choice of characters for the country names. While Germany with the Chinese in Mandarin (standard Chinese) as "Deguo" 德國  /  德国 = " Virtue country is called" Japan used in the historic Kanji letters独 逸（ド イ ツ） Doitsu for Germany . The first character 独 doku means “ alone ”, the second 逸 tsu means “to flee ” or “ wander ”. In this case, however, both are used purely phonetically to reproduce the word “ German ”.

Loanwords

Ateji are used for old loan words that do not come from Chinese, such as food or merchandise from the first contact with Europeans in the 16th century. An example is "Tempura" (" Tenpura ") 天 麩 羅（て ん ぷ ら）, 天婦羅（て ん ぷ ら）for the former Lenten dish (fried fish, shrimp and vegetables) of the Portuguese. These characters were selected after the reading.

If you implement the meaning, you come to characters for tobacco ,煙草（タ バ コ）meaning "smoke-grass". They are here, " tabako spoken" and not " kemuri-kusa as it corresponds" the characters. Sometimes both can be achieved. E.g. the (outdated) spelling for kurabu , "club". The characters倶 楽 部（ク ラ ブ）can be read as ku - ra (ku) - bu and roughly mean "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 for example sushi 寿司（す し）. The first Kanji 寿 kotobuki ( on-reading ju , su , Kun-reading kotobuki ) means "long life", the second Kanji 司 tsukasa (on-reading shi , Kun-reading tsukasa ) actually means "civil servant".

Usage today

Since the writing reform in 1946, only katakana have been used in modern Japanese to write foreign words . Most of the Ateji are therefore no longer used in normal parlance. Only some words that were so firmly anchored in linguistic usage that they are no longer perceived as foreign words, such as tabako , are still written in Kanji or, if the characters are too complicated, in Hiragana .

The abbreviations for country names (for example 独 doku for Germany) that are used in compound words (for example 日 独 関係nichidoku kankei "Japanese-German relations") go back directly to the old Ateji spellings of the country names. Other examples are 亜 a for Asia, derived from 亜 細 亜 Ajia , and 米 bei for America, derived from 亜 米利加 America . ( see list of country names in Japanese )