Vocabulary you thought were made up of other kanji

Japanese Language
1

Last night, I was watching Fairy Tail and there was this one episode which talked about ‘anniversary’. The characters kept mentioning 「きねんび」and I managed to remember it by the end of the episode.

Before I slept, I thought of what it would be if written in Kanji. I thought 期年日 could be the word. I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? A period of time, year, and day. An anniversary is a day in the year after a period of time. So I then slept soundly for the night.

Just this morning, by pure coincidence, 「記念日」appeared in my lesson queue. To my (pleasant) surprise, this was the very word for ‘anniversary’ used in the Fairy Tail episode I watched last night! I just grinned through my entire lesson queue thinking about how coincidental it was.

What about you guys? Are there any vocab you thought were made up of some kanji, but turns out it was made up of something different entirely?

6 Likes
2

Can’t think of anything off the bat, but I felt stupid when I learned that イレズミ comes from 入れ墨.

3 Likes
3

I certainly thought that むしあつい (humid/ultra hot) was written as 虫暑い (bug hot) but recently found it is actually 蒸し暑い (steamy hot). The actual kanji makes a lot more sense, but remembering the word as ‘bug hot’ was much more fun.

9 Likes
4

I agree - makes me think of how deafeningly loud the cicadas get in such weather! (alas, no cicada emoji :disappointed:)

2 Likes
5

still baffled that watermelon is not 水瓜

11 Likes
6

I didn’t expect 沢山 (たくさん).
The first time I saw it written like that I went whaaaaat.

6 Likes
7

That’s interesting! I didn’t think that there would be a kanji form for たくさん

8

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.