So I’m reading a light novel and I just saw セリフ written as 台詞, and that struck me as very interesting since it’s a loanword derived from “Serif” of script fonts, since it refers to a line of dialogue, so the fact that a generally katakana word has a kanji spelling is kind of wild. It’s definitely not the pronunciation I’d probably think of seeing the characters 台詞, I’d probably think like, daishi or something, so how does this happen?
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>since it’s a loanword derived from “Serif” of script fonts
Is it? I’m not an expert or anything but [this](https://gogen-yurai.jp/serifu/) site doesn’t seem to agree.
The kanji seem to be from:「舞台詞（ぶたいことば）」の上略。
Edit: [this](https://kanjibunka.com/kanji-faq/old-faq/q0200/) site has a slightly different opinion but yeah seems like both are saying セリフ is a fully Japanese derived word, and the kanji were slapped on borrowing meaning from a Chinese word?
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A few foreign words like 倶楽部、煙草、天麩羅 were given characters historically but there was no particular rule as to how this was done. A Japanese character can read anything if people say so, like the many readings of 生.
I can’t comment on your particular example, but I think this is called ateji. It comes in three kinds: sometimes kanji are chosen to match the word’s sound; sometimes kanji are chosen to match the word’s meaning (and the kanji consequently receive new readings which are unique to just that one word); and sometimes kanji are chosen to match both the sound and the meaning. I think the third kind are especially interesting, but your example would likely fall into the second category.