71899
I noticed that the term "can" is written with a kanji term but pronounced as
in English. Why use a kanji? The word coffee has a kanji, but is commonly
written in katakana.

It might be ateji, but I always thought that ateji was accompanied by a
katakana spelling or the katakana spelling would be the one predominantly
used.
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2019-09-16T19:10:11.223
71851
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question
words kanji etymology katakana
Why is the term for can as in ''aluminum can" written in kanji?
I assume that you're referring to「缶」- it's **not** pronounced as in English,
but an _on'yomi_ (and also a word used in Chinese).

This is a bit hard to see in the _shinjitai_ form. In _kyūjitai_ , the _kanji_
is「罐」.「罐」is made up of semantic「缶」( _picture of a jar/pot_ ) and
phonetic「[雚]{かん}」, which occurs in many characters as a sound component:

  * [觀]{かん} ( _Shinjitai_ : 観)
  * [權]{けん} ( _Shinjitai_ : 権)
  * [歡]{かん} ( _Shinjitai_ : 歓)
  * etc.

Note that「[缶]{ふう}」( _jar/pot_ ) is not the same morpheme as「[缶]{かん}」, Japanese
have just merged the two together to the same shape by simplifying「罐」(by
cutting off「雚」).
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2019-09-16T19:47:29.807
71852
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answer
Droooze's answer is a good one. I'd like to add onto that here.

### Origins of the _"metal can"_ meaning for 缶

Even before, and especially after, the fall of the Edo 幕府【ばくふ】 (shogunate) in
1868, Japanese researchers were busy trying to find out what Japan had missed
out on during the long period of 鎖国【さこく】 ("locked country") policy, when the
Tokugawa regime strictly controlled foreign access to and contact with Japan.
During this time, many new words and concepts were imported into Japanese,
with old words sometimes pressed into service with new meanings. Some common
terms that we don't even think about, like 社会【しゃかい】 ("society") and 自由【じゆう】
("freedom") were re-forgings of older words to apply to new meanings.

From what I can find, it appears that 缶【かん】 is one such similar term.
According to Shogakukan's 国語大辞典【こくごだいじてん】 (KDJ) entry
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%BC%B6%E3%83%BB%E7%BD%90%E3%83%BB%E9%91%B5-2025576),
the word 缶【かん】 in reference to a "can" dates from the late 1800s. Both the KDJ
entry and the separate Daijisen entry
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%BC%B6-468981) agree that this particular
sense came from either English _can_ or Dutch _kan_ , with the kanji spelling
an example of ateji usage.

As droooze notes, this kanji 缶 had a long history in Japanese and Chinese
prior to the late 1800s, referring more generally to a _container_ of some
sort -- possibly an earthenware, glass, or ceramic _"jar"_ , or a metal
_"pot"_ or _"water bucket"_ , that kind of thing. The shift in sense from
_"metal pot or water bucket"_ to _"metal can"_ isn't very far, and indicates
the kind of creative linguistic rejiggering that happened a lot in the late
1800s in Japan.

### Why use kanji for a borrowed term

There are a many borrowed words that have kanji forms. The most obvious ones
are almost all of the _on'yomi_ terms out there -- these mostly came into the
Japanese language as borrowings from Middle Chinese.

That said, your question is clearly asking about more recent borrowings. Even
then, there are a few such terms that have common kanji forms. The more
familiar ones were borrowed earlier on in the course of Japanese contact with
Europeans, such as 天麩羅【てんぷら】 (from an apparent conflation of Portuguese
_temperar_ and _tempora_ ), or 煙草【たばこ】 (from Spanish and Portuguese _tabaco_ ,
in turn from terms in either Taíno and/or Arabic), or 如雨露【じょうろ】 (from
Portuguese _jarro_ ), or 襦袢【じゅばん】 (from Portuguese _gibão_ ). So using kanji
for borrowings isn't unheard of.

缶 is a much more recent borrowing, comparatively, but it's also on the edge of
old enough that the spelling has had time for wide adoption. Combine that with
the way the reading conveniently overlaps with the borrowed foreign word, the
simplicity of the character (not too many strokes), and that it is perhaps
visually evocative of a can, and we see persistent use in modern writing.
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2019-09-19T00:30:54.723
71899
2019-09-19T00:30:54.723
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answer