In some sense yojijukugo are the original memes, in that they can be riffed off for humorous purposes. For example, the Japanese idiom for "the strong devour the weak" is ???? jakuniku kyuushoku (the meat of the weak is the food of the strong), but you can instead say ???? yakuniku teishoku (lit. grilled meat set meal) for laughs, and rakugo comedian Jakusaburo Katsura released an album called ???? jakuniku kyuushoku (same reading, but meaning "let's eat sparrow meat together" and referring to his own name).
Do you have any recommendations for material that teaches Japanese in this manner? I've found few resources that actually go into etymology like you have shown.
Japanese has ?? jukugo, which is similar (if I understand the concept of a chengyu correctly): a set phrase of Chinese characters. The famous case are the 4 character set phrases, ???? yojijukugo, which are mentioned in the article, but there are other kinds too.
Besides that, there is ??? kanyouku, which means just an idiom in general, and isn't restricted to kanji expressions. And ????? kimarimonku, which means something like a "cliche phrase".
Sharing some Korean Yojijukugos (originating from China)
????(????) wii rok ji ma
To point at a deer and call it a horse. Used for suck ups who says agrees to things that are clearly not right.
????(????) ub cham ma sok
To behead Ma Su (name) while crying. In the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang had to behead his favourite general Ma Su as he wept because Ma Su ignored the given command resulting in losing the war. This is used when you have to be fair for the greater good.
There are also fake yojijukugos which were created on online forums. These are not based on Chinese characters but made by taking letters from Korean phrases. But they caught on because they kinda sound like real yojijikugos :D
???? nae ro nam bul
Romance for me, but adultery for you. Used for people who are lenient to themselves but strict to others.
???? ja gang doo cheon
Fight of two strong-sprited geniuses. Used when two strong characters butt head with each other.
Very nice, I also like the other yojijukugo displayed at the bottom, especially jyuunintoiro. I enjoy (what I perceive as) the subtle wordplay of having two different readings of the same character (ten) in the word, hinting at the sort of "more than one way to skin a cat" theme of the word.
Literally, the characters are "ten people ten colors", but the two "tens" are read differently: "jyuu" and "to" respectively, because the same character can have multiple readings.
Yojijukugo are really fun, I've written about them a bit here if anyone wants more context: https://jm.dev/yojijukugo
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27733147W/Kanji_idioms?editi...
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