Re: furikanji


"necoandjeff" <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dbts26$m84$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I just caught a bit on an NHK program about the Japanese language that
brought up an interesting point. Anybody know how to read the second of the
following two words?

大人
小人

I didn't see the program in question, but "小人" is often used as ateji for "kodomo". For example when you go to a place like Disneyland there is 大人 5000 yen and this word with the children's price.

They started asking a bunch of Japanese on the street and got a lot of
people scratching their heads and coming up with all kinds of responses. The
answers included shounin, kojin, kodomo, and my favorite, kotona. Nobody
seemed very confident in their answer.

I think usually the word appears along with "otona" so the reading is clear from the context. If you take away the "otona" context then it's not clear what the word means.

The answer is, there is no correct
way of reading it. It's an example of a word that exists in kanji, is
commonly used, conveys meaning, but has no particular reading. Another
example of this kind of word that was given was 白飯. The scholar on the
show who discussed this phenomenon referred to these as furikanji. However,
I got the sense he was being cute with terminology, so this may not be an
official word (indeed, it isn't in the Daijirin.)

Ben, this phenomenon might make an interesting addition to your set of faqs
if we could come up with a decent sized collection of them. Can anyone think
of any others?

I already have the beginnings of an entry about this, which by coincidence I started a couple of days ago:

http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/one-to-many-word.html

Here is the text of the entry, for muchan et al who don't like following the links:

Text begins 

4.2.8. Can a kanji word have more than one reading?

Yes. Some kanji words have more than one reading and more than one meaning as well, depending on the context. Common examples are 大人気, which can be read either otonage, "adultness", or daininki, "very popular", or 実, which can be read either mi, meaning "fruit", or jitsu, meaning "truth".

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Text ends

Anyone who wants to edit the page is welcome to do so either as a followup to this message or by email.

I also found a very nice dictionary of words of this sort:
http://www.h-dc.com/hantai/ionigigo.htm

I'll be adding this link to the sljfaq in due course.

This was one of the links from the following web page:
http://www.matsumoto-jp.com/study/dict.shtml

This is a great list of glossaries and online dictionaries. I'm gradually sorting through them looking for interesting stuff.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: furikanji
    ... Yes, it's complex, and one of those cases where the reading depends ... on the sense and context. ... >> commonly used, conveys meaning, but has no particular reading. ... Some kanji words have more than one reading and more than one meaning ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Is "wa" a punctuation mark?
    ... you need to work out the pronunciation from the context - ... pronounce, and what it means. ... Are you reading this sentence without any internal pronunciation at some level? ... Consider that written language hasn't been around long enough for us to have evolved special brain functions or brain parts for reading. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Online photo printing
    ... There were two words out of context that made no sense to me so I politely queried the poster's meaning. ... Try reading the thread. ...
    (uk.misc)
  • Re: newbie : exposure terminology - aperture "increase".
    ... >>Without reading the book and knowing in what context the author used the ... would be a correct statement. ... > Perhaps a bit confusing, but it's not that hard to pick up. ...
    (alt.photography)
  • Re: The Dedekind Snap
    ... of responding line by line rather than reading my post with at least ... enough context to get to the next line before you go "???" ... plain errors of fact and reasoning - but ordinarily my posts do ...
    (sci.logic)