Why is 仕事 pronounced as こと


> **Possible Duplicate:**  
>  [Why are some lyrics words written in kanji whose usual reading is not how
> it is sang?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/198/why-are-some-
> lyrics-words-written-in-kanji-whose-usual-reading-is-not-how-it-is)

So, we were reading Hunter X Hunter manga in Japanese (page 16 if you're
interested) and stumbled upon the following sentence:

> 実はオレずっと前から知ってたんだ親父の 仕事{こと} ・・・

And we figured out the following (probably incorrect) translation:

> The truth is, I was always aware about my father's (work? thing?) ...

The furigana next to 「仕事」 says 「こと」 and we thought it to be strange, because
we usually encounter 「仕事」 as 「しごと」 (work), moreover we were unable to find the
「こと」 reading in the dictionary.

To sum it up: Why is 「仕事」 read as 「こと」 in this case and what does the sentence
actually mean?




I am not familiar with the manga, but this is a fairly common way of
expressing words that have a double meaning. For example, judging solely based
on the one sentence you posted, I would guess that the speaker's father has
some unusual job, like maybe he's an assassin or something like that. What the
speaker would be actually saying would be 親父のことを知ってる, but what he specifically
means is that he knows about his father's job. Just a way of showing textually
both what he says and what he means. You'll often see this in subtitles for
movies as well. One simple example I always remember is when I saw Tron here,
they always said 出口{ポータル}. So just think of the top as what they say and the
bottom as what they mean.




I am not familiar with the manga, but this is a fairly common way of
expressing words that have a double meaning. For example, judging solely based
on the one sentence you posted, I would guess that the speaker's father has
some unusual job, like maybe he's an assassin or something like that. What the
speaker would be actually saying would be 親父のことを知ってる, but what he specifically
means is that he knows about his father's job. Just a way of showing textually
both what he says and what he means. You'll often see this in subtitles for
movies as well. One simple example I always remember is when I saw Tron here,
they always said 出口{ポータル}. So just think of the top as what they say and the
bottom as what they mean.

