Kanji homograph
Kanji homographs (kanji: 同形異義語, Japanese kana:どうけいいぎご, Romaji: dōkei-igigo) are words written with the exact same kanji but with different pronunciations, and perhaps a different meaning. Since most kanji already have multiple different pronunciations, this phenomenon was inevitable. Examples of kanji homographs include the multiple different pronunciations for the kanji compound 今日, which can either be kyou (きょう) which means "today", or kon'nichi (こんにち) which can either mean "today" or "nowadays" but is usually used in the phrase kon'nichi-wa (今日は or こんにちは) which is roughly equivalent to the English phrase "hello!" or "how are you today?".[1] Historical examples include 東京 which is pronounced as either Tōkyō (Japanese kana: とうきょう) or Tōkei (とうけい), of which the latter pronunciation is obsolete, and 日本 which is pronounced either Nippon (にっぽん) or Nihon (にほん) interchangeably in today's world based on the characters' on'yomi, but was originally pronounced Hi no Moto (ひのもと) based on the characters' kun'yomi.[2] Other examples include 大和 which can be either Yamato (やまと, the name of an imperial dynasty in Japan) or Daiwa (だいわ), 仮名 which can be kana (かな, a Japanese syllabary), kamei (かめい, a pseudonym), karina (かりな, an alias), or kemyō (けみょう, a pseudonym), and 一章 which can be isshō (いっしょう, one chapter) or Kazuaki (かずあき, one of many Japanese personal names).[3]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Homographs: how to deal with them?". japanese.stackexchange.com. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ↑ "Japanese culture: Why Japan is Japan? How Japan became Japan?". www.fuzita.org. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
- ↑ "The CJK Dictionary Institute, Inc. - The Challenges of Intelligent Japanese Searching". www.cjk.org. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
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