Pronouncing hanzi as kanji

[Dakuten]

Quite a few times, for whatever reason, I have run into the wall of finding a Chinese character with a Chinese pronunciation but no Japanese pronunciation (or at least not one I've been able to find in any dictionary), and wanted to pronounce it in Japanese. This got me to wondering how characters such as "䫖" and "㩱" are pronounced in Japanese if they occur in the name of something. Could anyone explain this?

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Dakuten

Quite a few times, for whatever reason, I have run into the wall of finding a Chinese character with a Chinese pronunciation but no Japanese pronunciation (or at least not one I've been able to find in any dictionary), and wanted to pronounce it in Japanese. This got me to wondering how characters such as "䫖" and "㩱" are pronounced in Japanese if they occur in the name of something. Could anyone explain this?

Unfortunately, the two characters you posted only appear as question marks to me...

Which likely means they don`t exist in Japanese. Japan only uses a limited set of characters compared to Chinese. There may very well not be any Japanese reading for them. Your best bet is to check similar Kanji and use one with a reading similar to the Chinese in it`s place. (This is how most of the Chinese I know write their names in Japanese.)

[anrakushi]

the dictionary i looked up that has more than 12,000 characters for japanese in the database but didn't have them. also the chinese dictionary i looked up didn't have them >< so i had to look them up in another chinese dictionary. i asked my chinese friends who speak cantonese and mandarin and they didn't even know these characters. they must not be in regular use in china.

in the 大漢和辞典 (大漢和辞典 - Wikipedia) there are over 50,000 characters so it is certainly not a matter of them not existing in japanese. whether they are ever used is another thing all together.. haha. without being able to looking them up in said dictionary it would be hard to find out their pronunciation.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by anrakushi

in the 大漢和辞典 (大漢和辞典 - Wikipedia) there are over 50,000 characters so it is certainly not a matter of them not existing in japanese. whether they are ever used is another thing all together.. haha. without being able to looking them up in said dictionary it would be hard to find out their pronunciation.

The 大漢和辞典 is a *Chinese* dictionary. It`s considered the definitive Chinese to Japanese dictionary. Saying that something has to exist in Japanese because it`s in that dictionary is on the same lines of saying "Well, I found Kanji in my Japanese to English dictionary, so they must be in use in America. The book was published there." It doesn`t really make sense.

There are only a limited set of 漢字 in use in Japan. Most people never learn any beyond those. Japanese fonts also only include so many (more than most people know, but still nowhere CLOSE to the number in Chinese.)

In other words, there is a pretty high chance that the characters you are trying to find a Japanese reading for do not have one.

[anrakushi]

the 常用漢字 is a very limited set and many japanese are even forgetting those, the highest kanji test i think is 6000 kanji and as i said the japanese dictionary i use has reading for 12,000+ characters and is increasing all the time.

I'm not disputing with you that these thousands of characters are not used but a great proportion of chinese characters exist in Japanese. Regardless of whether they are now never used their readings will never disappear.