I vaguely remember seeing a word once that was more characters when written with kanji than when it was written phonetically in kana. It may have been some really old loanword from back when loanwords were written with kanji instead of katakana, but I’m not sure. Can anyone think of any words like that?
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Dunno which one you’re thinking of. But here are some. Also some of these are rare variants of more common, shorter kanji forms.
百舌鳥 (もず)
百合草 (ゆり)
老海鼠 (ほや)
再従兄弟 (はとこ)
香具師 (やし)
土当帰 (うど)
大口魚 (たら)
青花魚 (さば)
牛尾魚 (こち)
蝦虎魚 (はぜ)
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Probably not a surprise, but of those I only know はとこ. (Well, I know ゆり, but that’s usually written 百合.)
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Lots of animals.
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Yep, I looked them up. Like I said, not a surprise. I don’t really know uncommon animals that well, and I imagine that’s the case for most learners.
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