独り言
ひとりごと · hitorigoto · JLPT N2 · noun
soliloquy
🗣️ 独り言 = alone (独り) + words (言): words you say when you're by yourself
独り (hitori) means alone and 言 (koto) means words or speech. Put together, you get words spoken with no one else around, which is a soliloquy.
独 — dog radical 犭 + 蜀 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 犭 (dog) gives the meaning, since dogs were thought to fight when kept together and so were often kept singly, while 蜀 supplies the sound. The original sense was 'solitary dog,' which broadened to 'alone, single, only.'