Learning Japanese with Berserk: Troll
Added 2022-06-17 09:07:17 +0000 UTCContinuing our series on the kanji behind proper nouns, here comes the trolls!
The katakana for troll is トロール (TORŌRU). It's afixed as furigana on the kanji 獣鬼. The word first shows up on the last page of volume 23.
獣 (KEMONO) means "beast" with the connotation of a wild beast, like something you'd hunt. It's the same kanji than in "Beast of Darkness". 鬼 (ONI) translates as "demon" or "ogre" and is well-known as a figure of Japanese folklore. The resulting combination simply means "demon beast".
Now, the pronunciations I listed earlier are for these kanji by themselves, but that would likely change when combined. It might be JUUKI in this case. That's where furigana comes in. Because there's no strictly formal rule for when to use one pronunciation or the other (like ONI or KI), this allows the reader to be sure. But as we know, in this case Miura rather chose one based on Western fantasy, which is why he used katakana and not hiragana.
