so, i’ve been reading the sailor moon manga in japanese lately and it’s a bit odd that 王女サマ (おうじょサマ) has furigana reading プリンセス(princess), which is the english translation. would post an image but this community doesn’t allow images.
This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s a stylistic choice of sorts.
Its indicating that in this scenario, for this person/thing, you should use the English word for the kanji. They want the Kanji to represent the thing but English is so cool!
They do this in Mario Galaxy with Heavens Door too.
Also wait I’m just learning this word. 王女, oujo, means princess? That sounds confusing, given お嬢, ojou, means ‘young lady’. I can only guess they’re only used in different contexts?
5 comments
what makes it odd? in your opinion
This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s a stylistic choice of sorts.
Its indicating that in this scenario, for this person/thing, you should use the English word for the kanji. They want the Kanji to represent the thing but English is so cool!
They do this in Mario Galaxy with Heavens Door too.
There’s a term for that: 義訓(ぎくん).
https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/12/gikun.html?m=1
Pro tip: you can upload images to imgur and then put the link in the post.
Onto your question, that’s called 義訓 (reading by meaning) or ルビ芸 (funny ruby (ruby is the proper name for the small text above the main text, furigana is a subtype of ruby)). You might be interested in reading https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BE%A9%E8%A8%93#%E7%8F%BE%E4%BB%A3%E3%81%AE%E7%BE%A9%E8%A8%93
I see this fairly often too. It’s odd
Also wait I’m just learning this word. 王女, oujo, means princess? That sounds confusing, given お嬢, ojou, means ‘young lady’. I can only guess they’re only used in different contexts?