It's easier to describe what I mean by "purely 'phonetic' kanji compounds" with an example. The kanji for ふろ ([Japanese-style] bath) is 風呂. The meanings of the two constituent characters (風="wind/air/style/manner" + 呂="spine/backbone") have no obvious semantic connection to "bath". The explanation is that these Chinese characters were chosen only to match the phonetics of a pre-existing Japanese word, without any regard to meaning.

What is this type of compound called? (I'm hoping that with the right keyword I will be able to find a useful compendium of them.)

(I use the term "compound" here loosely, since the phenomenon could conceivably occur with single characters, though I can't name any examples.)

BTW, I'm familiar with the concept of irregular readings/ateji, as found in compounds like 今日 (=きょう). I think the phenomenon I'm describing here is not the same thing. In contrast to ateji, for the compounds I'm referring to here the reading is completely regular (this is so by definition, or at least was so at the time the compound was coined). What's "irregular" here is the semantic disconnect between the component Chinese character(s) and the Japanese word.

TIA!

Wikipedia: 当て字

Quote:* 漢字の字義を無視し、読み方のみを考慮して漢字を当てる場合。狭義にはこれのみを指す。仮借を参照。
* 漢字の読み方を無視し、字義のみを考慮して漢字を当てる場合。広義にはこれを含む解釈もある。なお六書の「転注」がこれを指すと考える学説がある。日本語の熟字訓も含まれる。

If the characters were "picked" for meaning regardless of reading or reading regardless of meaning both are ateji.

Amset Wrote:Wikipedia: 当て字

Quote:* 漢字の字義を無視し、読み方のみを考慮して漢字を当てる場合。狭義にはこれのみを指す。仮借を参照。
* 漢字の読み方を無視し、字義のみを考慮して漢字を当てる場合。広義にはこれを含む解釈もある。なお六書の「転注」がこれを指すと考える学説がある。日本語の熟字訓も含まれる。

If the characters were "picked" for meaning regardless of reading or reading regardless of meaning both are ateji.

In that case, I can't understand how it is that a word as common as 風呂 does not appear in any of the ateji lists I've found (namely, the list that Katsuo posted, and http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/熟字訓)

gfb345 Wrote:In that case, I can't understand how it is that a word as common as 風呂 does not appear in any of the ateji lists I've found (namely, the list that Katsuo posted, and http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/熟字訓)

Jukujikun is just a subset of ateji where the meaning is taken but not the reading (ex: 一人). 風呂 is not a jukujikun as the reading is taken, not the meaning. The list that Katsuo posted is just of the official jouyou ateji. Furo is not included because 呂 is not a jouyou kanji.

Jarvik7 Wrote:The list that Katsuo posted is just of the official jouyou ateji. Furo is not included because 呂 is not a jouyou kanji.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification! (And thanks to Amset for pointing out my error.)

Jarvik7 Wrote:Jukujikun is just a subset of ateji where the meaning is taken but not the reading (ex: 一人). 風呂 is not a jukujikun as the reading is taken, not the meaning.

What I was after was the word designating the subset of ateji that are not jukujikun. Is there a name for them?

In the strictest sense, jukujikun is not ateji, which means that ateji is a term that has been diluted to encompass both concepts. I am not familiar with any separate term that is synonymous with only the original meaning of the word "ateji."

Sometimes a distinction is drawn between 当て字 (like 風呂) and 熟字訓, other times 当て字 is used as a covering term for both. It depends on what you're looking at.

JimmySeal Wrote:In the strictest sense, jukujikun is not ateji, which means that ateji is a term that has been diluted to encompass both concepts. I am not familiar with any separate term that is synonymous with only the original meaning of the word "ateji."

Yes, this finally dawned on me after a few more searches.

Basically my original understanding of 当て字 was exactly backwards. These 当て字 (in the narrow sense of the term) are precisely the "purely phonetic" kanji compounds that I'm interested in. Unfortunately, knowing the right keyword has turned out to be not very useful in Google searches. As you and others have pointed out, this concept has gotten diluted to include 熟字訓, which is a completely different type of irregularity, and one I'm not interested in at the moment...

Actually, what makes the correct keyword practically useless in Google searches is that the 熟字訓 greatly outnumber the "true 当て字", so the lists of so-called 当て字 that I've found actually contain a very small fraction of true 当て字, lost in a sea of 熟字訓. > .

(The reason I'm more interested in 当て字 is that I'm less concerned about not knowing a compound's reading, as long as I can guess its meaning. At this stage of my learning, anyway, I can limp along with my rudimentary knowledge of the meanings of characters [from RTK1+RTK3], even though I know practically no readings at all, regular or not. But with the true 当て字 guessing the meaning is impossible. I want to treat them as "macro-kanji" and learn them by an extension of the Heisig method, i.e. by coming up with stories for whole compounds. Having a list of these "true 当て字" would be the first step in this project, but I can't get hold of one.)

I think the reason you're having so much trouble finding what you're looking for is that "true ateji" have a much lower frequency than jukujikun. Most cases of "true ateji" that still exist in modern Japanese are for spelling (non-Chinese) foreign words and nowadays most of those would be written in katakana. A few that you'll probably see pretty often are the one-character abbreviations for geographical name ateji:

米 - US, America
仏 - France
独 - Germany
露 - Russia
豪 - Australia
欧 - Europe
英 - England, UK
伊 - Italy

Other than that, you really won't see that many different ateji, and if you do see a compound that seems really out of place, you can always look it up. It shouldn't happen that often.

JimmySeal Wrote:I think the reason you're having so much trouble finding what you're looking for is that "true ateji" have a much lower frequency than jukujikun. Most cases of "true ateji" that still exist in modern Japanese are for spelling (non-Chinese) foreign words and nowadays most of those would be written in katakana. A few that you'll probably see pretty often are the one-character abbreviations for geographical name ateji:

米 - US, America
仏 - France
独 - Germany
露 - Russia
豪 - Australia
欧 - Europe
英 - England, UK
伊 - Italy

Thanks for this pointer. I found this interesting-looking list:

http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/...4#93390642

(I realize that probably many of the entries in this list are mere curiosities, not in common use.)