So i thought you were referring to one of them. I dunno, I guess authors whos works I read just prefer to say スプーン or dont like the kanji. Theres also さじ加減 but I’m not sure if thats used with the kanji often.
I have a text file full of just some books ive read so that I can quickly ctrl+f grammar points for example sentences for when I was learning the rest of n1 grammar and I went ahead and checked…and yep sure enough no 匙. About 100000 lines of japanese text from like…40 books maybe? Guess I am just the master of avoiding spoons (well, スプーン came up 6 times.)
EDIT:
Son of a birch tree, the ONE book I read casually and don’t add words for (今夜世界からこの恋が消えても) has 匙 THREE times. nvm it shows up 3 times in bakemonogatari which is the book I was reading lmao.
You gotta read more 獣の奏者 apparently! 匙 shows up six times as a standalone word in the first book, only the first of which has furigana. And it shows up once in the second book, as 匙加減 (with furigana).
I also feel like I’ve seen it in ご注文はうさぎですか at least once, but as that’s a manga I can’t just do a quick search to find out for sure. That manga is published in one of the Manga Time Kirara magazines, which tends to use more kanji than average though. It’s also in the title of the ご注文はうさぎですか character song 一匙のお姫さま物語.
The phonetic component has been reduced to 罗 in Simplified Chinese, and I can kinda see why. Still, it looked sort of familiar, and its use in 警邏 confirmed that I had the right equivalent in mind.
It’s funny how many 維-like things I’ve seen simplified that still exist in Japanese. 擁 is another one: it’s just 拥 (phonosemantic simplification) in Simplified Chinese.
My latest non-WK kanji is probably this one on my mnemonics thread: 昄（はん）. It means ‘big’. I don’t know if it’s ever appeared in Japanese literature, but it’s in Jitenon and there are a few examples in Chinese literature. No idea if I’ll ever need to use it, and I doubt it.
The same book just gave me 櫓(やぐら) and 暗渠(あんきょ) in rapid succession.
At least both were easy to understand from context (and well, the fact that the first one sounds like 矢倉, which is a valid way to write it too!)
I feel like I have seen 渠 before, but it’s eluding me.
I encountered (and entered) an actual 櫓 when I visited Hikone Castle back in 2017, though I don’t think I paid much attention to what kanji was being used.
Second book in the series 邂逅, no furigana of course. (I mean, it was again really easy to guess the reading…) I had to look up its meaning though
I feel like I have seen that word before though And, considering its meaning (encounter), that’s probable.
Phono-semantic composition in kanji means the kanji was created by taking the sound of one existing kanji (phono) and the meaning of some other part (semantic). This means it’s always an onyomi that contributed the sound part, not a kunyomi.
It’s like 80% of all kanji that have this kind of composition.
But when someone says something like this
They mean the sound relationship is still obviously apparent in modern Japanese, which is not always the case.
I was also thinking about the radical (in the Japanese dictionary sense of the word) しんにょう, since it brings the concept of path/movement and the actual meaning of the kanji is めぐる.
What an evil kanji, goddamn. I won’t say its meaning, but let’s just say there isn’t a single positive concept expressed by this kanji or any jukugo involving this kanji.
Still, it looked sort of familiar, and its use in 警邏 confirmed that I had the right equivalent in mind.
And, considering its meaning (encounter), that’s probable.
As illustrated by this screenshot: