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Concept
Ateji
Summary
In modern Japanese, ateji principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely, ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.
For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its ateji "寿司". Though the two characters have the readings 'su' and 'shi' respectively, the character '寿' means "one's natural life span" and '司' means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. Ateji as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of katakana (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many ateji coined in earlier eras still linger on.
Ateji today are used conventionally for certain words, such as '寿司' ('sushi'), though these words may be written in hiragana (especially for native words), or katakana (especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. Ateji are particularly common on traditional store signs and menus. For example, "tempura" may be written as '天麩羅'. The Japanese loanword for "coffee" is generally written using the katakana 'コーヒー', but on coffee shop signs and menus it may be written with the Chinese word "珈琲", which is then pronounced irregularly to their normal Japanese reading (their kun'yomi).
Many characters have gained meanings derived from ateji usage. For example, ateji were once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the ateji "ajia" used to write "Asia". The original ateji word is now considered archaic, but the character '亜' has gained the meaning "Asia" in such compounds as "tōa", even though '亜' originally meant "subsequent" (and continues to). From the ateji "Amerika", the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage "Beikoku", which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of America"; however, "アメリカ" remains in far more common use in modern Japanese.
Official source
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