한자의 차용(借用)과 오노마토피아의 차자(借字)표기

Abstract

From the ancient times even to the modern times, the Chinese language has spread huge amount of vocabulary to Korean and Japanese. During the Edo period in Japan, application of Chinese enriched phonetic forms of Japanese people and atejinotation of onomatopoeia was applied to design distinct characteristics of the Japanese language. As time went by, this ateji notation was a way to combine Chinese and Japanese, which had great influence on phonetic features and phonetic forms. Onomatopoeia with unique Chinese characters spread in a fast speed. In the end of modern times, as the first country among Asian empires, Japan concentrated on accepting Western cultures, which came to have quite good achievement until the Meiji period. The modernization of Japan moved forward interlocked with the modernization of the Japanese language. The Meiji period was an important time of great change in terms of language system and application, such as notation of vocabulary, style of writing, ateji notation of onomatopoeia, etc. Atejinotation of onomatopoeia used in Japanese is considered as a reasonable idea to save ideographic function of Chinese by giving a definite meaning to even the same character or the same word. In the other words, it is said that Ateji notation of onomatopoeia saved the characteristics of ideograph and secured the function of the language form in case of notation of Chinese and it was aimed for the expressive effect as a wordplay. For these reasons, Chinese notationof onomatopoeia created new phonetic forms by combining sounds of Chinese which were not considered as the original Japanese. It can be said that it had a new function of onomatopoeia as vocabulary which left sounds and had no trace of Chinese by way of Kana notation.