I'm studying to take the Japan Kanji Aptitude Test (also known as the Kanken) at Level 1 sometime in the near future (yes, the ludicrously difficult even for native speakers one). There's a section that tests "ateji", or compound kanji words which are made up of kanji chosen for their meaning rather than their reading (most of the time). A simple example would "avalanche", 雪崩, which is read as nadare even though neither of the kanji in this word can be read that way – but individually they mean "snow" and "collapse/crumble", so it makes sense from a meaning perspective that snow + collapse = avalanche.
I've always loved ateji words because they can be a lot of fun – most of the words they test at Level 1 are obscure and boring, but some of them are amazing. Here are some of my favorites:
- 氷菓子 (アイスクリーム) – ice cream (lit. "frozen sweet")
- 洋酒 (ジン) – gin ("Western alcohol")
- 羊駝 (ラマ) – llama ("sheep camel")
- 乾酪 (チーズ) – cheese ("dried dairy")
- 海豹 (あざらし) – seal ("sea panther" lmao)
- 聖林 (ハリウッド) – Hollywood ("holy wood")
A lot of place names are tested but you can actually sort of guess them based on the phonetic readings of the kanji a lot of the time, so they're different from most other ateji words.
What are your favorite examples of ateji?
by _MuffinBot_