Question about (お)土産

Hi!

I am curious about 土産 (お土産). Why (and how) is it pronounced (お)みやげ? I get that お is honorific, but I can't figure out how 土 and 産 make みやげ. In fact I can't even figure out why (and how) it means present or souvenir.

Can anyone help with this? Thanks and rep if you can!

It is "ateji," or application of a word or term to kanji with identical or smilar meaning but pronounced differently. There are also other forms of ateji explained here.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/当て字
Ateji - Wikipedia

Miyage means gift, and the kanji combination was originally pronounced "tosan" or "dosan," meaning an item or product native to the region. The two became synonymous in the old days.

Further info here:
土産／みやげ - 語源由来辞典

epigene said:

It is "ateji," or application of a word or term to kanji with identical or smilar meaning but pronounced differently.

Miyage means gift, and the kanji combination was originally pronounced "tosan" or "dosan," meaning an item or product native to the region. The two became synonymous in the old days.

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Thanks, and rep! That's a great explanation

I am going to have to pay more attention to ateji -- "product native to the region" makes perfect sense in that context.

Any chance you are studying Genki? I also had the same question all the way back in that chapter.

Here's the link of the お土産 question.

How do you know... ON/KUN and beyond | Japan Forum

How do you know... ON/KUN and beyond | Page 6 | Japan Forum

Putrefaction said:

Any chance you are studying Genki? I also had the same question all the way back in that chapter.

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Not Genki, tho I might check it out as I have heard it is good.

I found お土産 in one of my final lessons of Pimsleur. After I master a lesson in Pimsleur I reference it using "Colloquial Japanese" by Noboru Inamoto and then add the vocab and grammar (in kana) to Anki. And once a word or phrase makes it into long term memory retention (1 month+) in Anki I then learn the Kanji for it and reset the interval in Anki as a new fact and repeat the process. The side benefit is that I am not learning random kanji or readings in isolation -- all of my kanji have words and reading that I can associate them to, and they often build up and reinforce with other words.

That was fine until I got to omiyage. I was very surprised to see it as お土産, as I didn't recognize any of the readings. It got worse when I looked the kanji up and none of the dictionaries showed matching on or kun readings. I panicked thinking I was missing something basic, and then realized after this post that I had forgotten about ateji. The only other ateji I had run across before was きょう (今日) and きのう (昨日), but that was very early on when I was just memorizing stuff by rote and not with any real understanding.

Hopefully the ateji are rare. Regular Japanese is challenging enough -- irregular Japanese is just wicked. And it gives me a new appreciation for anyone learning English -- we are notorious for all of our own spellings that make no sense.

Yes, it is really good. And if you ever need to check your work on any of the chapter reviews you can check out that topic, Toritoribe, Elizabeth, undrentide and epigene have all helped me with end of the answers to chapter reviews and understanding!

I've ran into some ateji myself, though I'm not sure if it is. 息子，従兄弟，八百屋。。。

Putrefaction said:

II've ran into some ateji myself, though I'm not sure if it is. 息子，従兄弟，八百屋。。。

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Indeed 八百屋 is 当て字, but actually, 八百 can be read as やお. 八 can be pronounced as や, as in 八つ[やっつ]. Also, お is the euphonic change of ほ, the classic word for hundred. It's rarely used in these days, though. The other examples I can think of for 百[お] are just only two, 八百万[やおよろず]; eight million or a lot and 五百旗頭[いおきべ]; a family name.

Every word that uses kanji phonetically, that is based not the kanji's meanings but only on the readings or sounds associated with the kanji, native or borrowed, is an 当て字 in Japanese. The role of the kanji is to represent the pronunciation as opposed to the meaning. It's a rather large category (寿司, 丁度, 怪我, 地下足袋).

Kanji being used for their meaning in which the reading doesn't match that in the original and being given a new reading is a much smaller type of problem.