Question about Pronunciation of words

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Question about Pronunciation of words - blargh88 - 2013-03-09

I'm not 100% sure if this has been answered before.. but i just started core2k/6k and am wondering:

say for "one person" hitori

i know hito is "person", but in the answer section, "hito" is above the kanji for one, and "ri" is above the kanji for person.

Or is it the reading just hitori for the both kanji's combined (ie. don't split up the vocab parts) if that makes any sense at all

thanks

Question about Pronunciation of words - Growl - 2013-03-09

ww, なるほど it took me a couple of reads to understand what you meant, and now that I think about it, I realized I never thought about it but both 一 and 人 have the ひと readings sometimes in their life. For 一人, 一（ひと）人（り）is correct.

Question about Pronunciation of words - yudantaiteki - 2013-03-09

ひとり is an ateji, so you can't break the word down into a reading for each kanji; it's just ひとり as a unit.

Question about Pronunciation of words - blargh88 - 2013-03-09

Hm,

for while doing core2k/6k would it be okay to skip over which "syllable(s)" go to which kanji , or should i be memorizing that as well.

I'm getting the feeling skipping it should be ok

Question about Pronunciation of words - SomeCallMeChris - 2013-03-09

I don't think you ever need to 'memorize' which syllables go with which kanji. If you learn the words, the patterns will become mostly evident.

It's sometimes useful to look up a character and see what its readings are just to get a better understanding (especially readings that have contracted a syllable into a っ and you want to be sure of the basic reading, or when you wonder if a second character always has a voiced reading or if it's voiced only because it's in a compound, etc.). Looking something up sometimes, however, is far different from straining yourself to explicitly memorize it.

Question about Pronunciation of words - Tzadeck - 2013-03-09

blargh88 Wrote:Hm,

for while doing core2k/6k would it be okay to skip over which "syllable(s)" go to which kanji , or should i be memorizing that as well.

I'm getting the feeling skipping it should be ok

Well, most of the time a kanji will line up to a specific reading.

Actually, although in this case it is an ateji and yudantaiteki is strictly speaking correct, I think you can think of 一 as ひと and 人 as り without it doing any harm to your Japanese. Only because, ひと is a common reading for 一, as in words like 一つ、一チーム、一坪. So it's natural to think of this as 一（ひと）人（り）, even though it's not technically correct.

Anyway, 人 does not have り as one of it's usual readings, so don't make a mistake and think that it does.

Question about Pronunciation of words - partner55083777 - 2013-03-09

blargh88 Wrote:Hm,

for while doing core2k/6k would it be okay to skip over which "syllable(s)" go to which kanji , or should i be memorizing that as well.

I'm getting the feeling skipping it should be ok

After a while it starts to become obvious (except for words with ateji). I wouldn't worry too much about it. There are probably a couple rules that you could use to figure out 90% of unknown words yourself. I don't know what the rules would be off the top of my head, but they would probably go like this (this is for 熟語):

1. If you have a four syllable word, then the first two syllables are probably the first kanji, and the next two syllables are probably the last kanji (e.x. 食卓（食卓）→ 食（しょく）卓（たく）).
2. If you have a two syllable word, then the first syllable is probably the first kanji, and the second syllable is probably the second kanjii (e.x. 維持（いじ）→ 維（い）持（じ）).
3. If you have a three syllable word, then you may have some trouble. Maybe just look it up for now? (You could probably work out rules for this that would involve く、つ、 and ん.)

Rules for 和語 would probably be more complicated (or even impossible to create).

Question about Pronunciation of words - Growl - 2013-03-10

If 人 is read り when used as a people counter suffix (which is true), then I don't really get the argument.

Question about Pronunciation of words - uisukii - 2013-03-10

Growl Wrote:If 人 is read り when used as a people counter suffix (which is true), then I don't really get the argument.

三人⇒さんにん→three people

Question about Pronunciation of words - yudantaiteki - 2013-03-10

Growl Wrote:If 人 is read り when used as a people counter suffix (which is true), then I don't really get the argument.

The Japanese government's official kanji rules classify 一人 and 二人 as ateji and don't give り as a reading for 人 (nor does any dictionary I know); whatever logical arguments you might make for it aside.

Question about Pronunciation of words - Tzadeck - 2013-03-10

Growl Wrote:If 人 is read り when used as a people counter suffix (which is true), then I don't really get the argument.

Well, ateji is either characters used for native/borrowed words only for their pronunciation while ignoring their meaning (for example, writing sushi as 寿司); or characters used only for their meaning while ignoring their pronunciation (for example, hitori as 一人 or mukade as 百足). It's more obvious in a case like むかで. Which character refers to which kana? You can't say because the characters are written ignoring their usual pronunciation.

Likewise, 一人 being read as ひとり doesn't really make any sense, since り is not a reading for 人. So it's an ateji. But it's kind of a special case since ひと is a reading of 一. I don't know the etymology of the word, but surely the ひと comes from the meaning 'one', so it seems reasonable to say that the reading for 一 in 一人 is 'ひと.' If you look at it in the context of ateji in general though, you have to say that assigning a pronunciation to a character is impossible, as in a case like 百足.

You could imagine that the word for 'one person' in Japanese was something absurd like てりる, and when a writing system was adopted the characters given to that word were 一人. It would obviously be impossible to assign the characters with specific kana, since that's just not normally how those characters are pronounced. So, technically speaking, that's what's going on here and a true pronunciation cannot be assigned.

But, yeah, I think of it as 一（ひと）人（り）.

Question about Pronunciation of words - SomeCallMeChris - 2013-03-10

I believe that 当て字 is strictly a reference to using characters purely for their phonetic meaning, a la 亜米利加、寿司, etc.
熟字訓 is the term for words that are written in kanji but read (irregularly) as a word with that meaning, the most obvious examples being 今日 and 明日.

一人 and 二人 do seem to be using 訓読み counting with 人 as a り counter, even though all other counted 人 use 音読み counting. At least, 一人・二人 don't show up in wikipedia's list of 熟字訓.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%86%9F%E5%AD%97%E8%A8%93

I haven't found a direct reference to what kind of reading 一人・二人 actually are, but I'm assuming at this point that they are kun-counters.

Question about Pronunciation of words - yudantaiteki - 2013-03-10

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I believe that 当て字 is strictly a reference to using characters purely for their phonetic meaning, a la 亜米利加、寿司, etc.
熟字訓 is the term for words that are written in kanji but read (irregularly) as a word with that meaning, the most obvious examples being 今日 and 明日.

I used to think this and be a stickler for it, but "ateji" is widely used for both even in some Japanese works so I stopped bringing it up.

Question about Pronunciation of words - Growl - 2013-03-10

I understand, but wait, rikaichan lists り as a reading of 人. ちがう?

Question about Pronunciation of words - dtcamero - 2013-03-10

As in the case above for America and sushi, I believe you can use ateji for almost anything. I remember a volume of GTO manga where the teacher went back to his roots as a hard core biker-gang bousouzoku member, and everything he said for like a full volume was in 100% ateji..with the furigana beside it. okurigana, particles, and even words with normal kanji usage would have phonetic ateji for each kana moji, and the normal kanji writing was included within the furigana.
I figured it was because bousouzoku love kanji (a la the tokkoufuku 特攻服), which could be a part of their larger nationalist streak. But I wonder if there isn't some nuance to choosing to spell a word with ateji vs normally...like how katakana for normal words means the pronunciation is weird/emphasized...
Anyone able to weigh in on that?

Question about Pronunciation of words - nadiatims - 2013-03-10

hitori is a wago (japanese word) meaning that it comes from japanese roots. ie. before the introduction of kanji to japan the word hitori (or something close) meant "one person". Hito means one and perhaps once upon a time ri meant person. The chinese characters "一人" (read yiren in mandarin) were simply chosen to represent the word hitori because the meaning is identical. It's not based on the reading at all. It's like if we chose to spell the english word toilet with the chinese characters "厕所". kango words are words that are loanwords from china or based on chinese roots and the reading is a japanisation of the original chinese reading. eg 躊躇

Question about Pronunciation of words - toshiromiballza - 2013-03-10

Brainfreeze time:

に is not one of the readings for 日, yet 日本 = にほん. So, 日本 is a 熟字訓. Prove me wrong. Big Grin

Question about Pronunciation of words - nadiatims - 2013-03-10

who cares whether 日本 is classified as 熟字訓 or not? にほん clearly comes from にっぽん　which comes from　につ（にち）and ほん which are japanisations of whatever the chinese readings were at the time they were borrowed. In present day mandarin "ri" and "ben" respectively, but in the ancient chinese language the readings were borrowed from 日 likely had a consonant ending (probably a t) which is where the ち ending comes from.

Question about Pronunciation of words - yudantaiteki - 2013-03-10

toshiromiballza Wrote:Brainfreeze time:

に is not one of the readings for 日, yet 日本 = にほん. So, 日本 is a 熟字訓. Prove me wrong.

It's more that the Japanese government still refuses to recognize にほん as an official reading of that, probably under right-wing influence.