Hello,

I am just getting started with Japanese readings, and I stumbled across some words like this: 何時 (question word: when?). It is read as いつ, but that cannot be explained by the readings of neither 何 nor 時 (that would be なんじ). I don't understand why the reading of the whole term is completely different from the reading of its compounds... anybody can enlighten me?

Another example would be 今日 -> きょう, but that does not seem to fit the on- and kun-readings of its kanji either.

Greetings,
Andreas

From my understanding... for words like that, they came up with the word first, and later attached the kanji to fit the meaning.

[Katsuo]

Here is the official Joyo exception list (but there are lots of others too).

Katsuo Wrote:Here is the official Joyo exception list (but there are lots of others too).

Oh, I did not know that such exceptions existed. This is very helpful, thanks!

熟字訓 have to simply be memorized. いつ and いつも are written in hiragana usually to prevent confusion. From context someone will figure out that you mean いつ and not なんじ if you use the kanji form, but there will be a momentary "...huh?" reaction since most people are accustomed to reading it in hiragana. It'll break the flow of reading, as the person will likely have to pause a second to contemplate the whole affair

crayonmaster Wrote:From my understanding... for words like that, they came up with the word first, and later attached the kanji to fit the meaning.

Strictly speaking that's true of all readings of all kanji; the words (or morphemes) come first, then the kanji.

What makes a 熟字訓 differ from just a normal 訓 reading is that as the name suggests, in a 熟字訓, the reading has been assigned to a sequence of two or more kanji rather than just one.