Hi! I am currently studying N5 kanji (main resource is a kanji app) and I just learned the kanji 天. I see the main description for the kanji is “Sky” (loosely) but now i am learning that the word 天ぷら (tempura) also uses this kanji?
Does anyone have information as to why this kanji is used in a word that describes stir fried fish and veggies?
3 comments
It’s just Ateji, the Characters don’t represent semantic meaning, they are just for approximate phonetic transliteration purposes. 天麩羅
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji
Same with things like Sushi (壽司)
There isn’t really a deeper meaning beyond that.
It is what it is bro don’t question it too much lol
Lots of things don’t make sense in lots of languages
For anyone who comes by my understanding of the 天 is sky in the heavenly sense, and this is why it’s part of the kanji for the Japanese emperor with the imperial connection to heaven and divinity.
空（そら） is for the sky outside your window.