Learning Japanese with Berserk: Witch

As Halloween approaches, what better topic than witches! Of course, in Berserk the word is most closely associated with Schierke and her late teacher, Flora. But we even got to see a very traditional witch recently, in episode 361, with the one and only Volvaba.

In Japanese, the word for "witch" is 魔女. It is pronounced まじょ (MAJO). Some of you may remember that we've encountered that first kanji before: that's right, it's 魔 (MA), which when used by itself can mean a demon, an evil spirit, an evil influence... Or, in Berserk's case, evil power.

When combined with another kanji, its meaning can change. For example 魔法 (MAHOU) means "magic". The kanji 法 (HOU) by itself has many different meanings, among which are "a principle" or "a method". But when those two kanji are put together, the resulting word is "magic".

In the case of 魔女, the second kanji is simply the one for woman: 女, which by itself is pronounced おんな (ONNA). Here, when combined, its pronunciation changes to the Chinese one (JO). Mind you, the pronunciation doesn't always change for compound words. For example, 雪女 is "ゆきおんな" (YUKI ONNA).

Do note that compound words (using several kanji) shouldn't be reduced to the sum of their parts. While I'm decomposing them here to make it simple to understand, words can take completely different meanings from the individual kanji that compose them. Trying to just understand kanji one by one is a surefire way to get things very wrong, very fast. In our case for example, 魔女 doesn't mean "evil woman". It means "witch" and is perfectly suited to a character like Schierke or to Kiki from the Studio Ghibli movie.

To get back to Berserk, in case some of you wonder, the word used by the Holy See for the women they burn at the stake and the one used by Flora and Schierke is the same in Japanese, just like in English. However, we are introduced to other terms for magic users which we will review at a later time in a dedicated post.