Saturday 5 September 2015

kanji - Where does the な in 大人 (otona) come from?


As far as I understand, the word 大人 (otona) uses the kanji 大 to represent お and the kanji 人 to represent と. According to this site the readings for 人 do not include な. Where does the な come from then?



Answer



It's [熟字訓]{じゅくじくん}. Excerpt from Wiktionary:




A Japanese word whose kanji spelling conveys the meaning based on the individual characters, but the reading is not directly related to the spellling. For example, 大 (“big”, usually read ō in kun'yomi compounds) and 人 (“person”, usually read hito in kun'yomi compounds) combine to form 大人, meaning “adult” but read as otona instead of the otherwise-expected ōbito.



We have tons of 熟字訓, e.g. [昨日]{きのう}, [土産]{みやげ}, [二十歳]{はたち} etc. For more, see 熟字訓 on Wikipedia.


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