English Words with Kanji
I wrote last time about an amusing marketing campaign by Georgia Coffee to sell canned coffee using the slogan "Yes, we can!" with the final word written in kanji. Say what -- a kanji character for an English word? While the general rule is that the katakana writing system is reserved for foreign names for people and places along with imported words like "bottle keep" (when you leave a bottle of bourbon you've purchased at your favorite bar with your name on it, trusting that no one else will drink it) or "skinship" (the Japanese word describing the important connection between a parent and child), some English words have been in use in Japan for so long they've been assigned honorary kanji, such as tobacco, coffee, or beer. This is an example of something called ateji, essentially assigning a pronunciation to characters that have a similar meaning. Sometimes the results are amusing -- for example, the characters for tobacco happen to be written with characters for "smoke" and "grass."




4 Comments:
It looks like they kind of forced the kanji to work for Tabaco, as I do see a naanori reading for the first kanji of "taba", but don't see a ko reading for the grass character.
What is the kanji for beer? 麦酒?
1:29 AM
Yes, that's the point of 当て字 ateji, you are making up a reading and forcing it into place. 凹凸 is a famous example of this -- it's read おうとつ but since it looks so "dekopoko" (zig-zagging, bumpy) it's unofficial reading has become デコポコ.
1:43 AM
When rendering ones name to Japanese, would it be acceptable to use ateji? My name (apart from being the now disused letters of nothern Europe) means 'secret, sacred' and my surname means 'gift from god'. So if I were to move to Japan, could my Hanko have the corresponding Kanji with katakana furigana to show how it's pronounced?
3:30 AM
Yes, if you look at our Japanese name stamps, that's one major way of rendering names. I've got a friend named Lockwood who uses kanji for "lock" and "tree" for his kanji.
3:58 AM
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