konakona50
Member
From: florida
Registered: 2008-08-26
Posts: 103
well i've had a problem as in i dont know which part of japanese words go for each kanji let show you and example
小学校= shougakkou
as you can see there are three character for this one word but i can't find which part of the word fits for each of those three characters.
i also had this problem for
一人= hitori
i was confused for this one because 人＝ hito and so why is 一 in front of it if the word is hito-ri ????
im so confused does anyone know here i can find a way to find out the exact meaning for each character in a word?
First, I'm not sure if you simply decided to use romaji in your post, but you shouldn't be learning kanji -> romaji; make sure you're learning kanji -> hiragana, if you aren't already
Regarding figuring out which character belongs to which pronunciation, like 小学校, the short answer is you start figuring it out over time. Almost all characters are only one or two syllables in length, so you can make an educated guess based on that alone.
Until you start to get that feel, use JDIC's kanji lookup. Plug in the entire word and it'll give you the readings for each character, the most common coming up first.
A quick rule you should be aware of: when a character ends with く, as the case with 学（がく） and another character immediately follows, that く (almost) always turns into a small つ. So if you were to put each independent character's reading together, you would have しょうがくこう, but the く turns into っ. If you forget this rule, say しょうがくこう five this as fast as you can. You'll notice that eventually you start slurring がくこう into がっこう 
.
一人 （ひとり） is one of those special words you're just going to have to memorize. There is no hardset rule that reasons why it should be pronounced that way.
Last edited by samesong (2008 October 23, 11:52 am)
konakona50 wrote:
ahhh!! so confusing! i still can't find the correct reading for 学 and 校 in context for the word 小学校 （しょうがっこう） i know that
小= しょう in the word but how about がっこう part? or should i just put that 学校＝がっこう?
soooo...confused
DARN YOU KANJI AND YOUR RIDICULOUSLY CONFUSING WAYS!
The readings are 小 しょう 学 がっ 校 こう
HOWEVER
がっ is not a standard reading for 学, it's just a slur of がく which is the actual reading. Get used to this sort of thing.. don't worry, it'll make sense eventually.
Yes, you should just put 学校＝がっこう。
Last edited by snispilbor (2008 October 23, 12:55 pm)
Raichu
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2005-10-27
Posts: 249
Website
At school our teacher tended to teach us the kanji readings, at least at first. Exams only tested whole words, but I think the teacher explained the readings so that we knew how the words were put together and so we could read other words with the same kanji. After a while, though, you start getting to learn the readings just be learning the words, so in the end you rarely need to look them up.
I think that worked well, so maybe I might suggest if you do have time to look up the readings of kanji as you encounter them. Don't work too hard to memorize them, but familiarize yourself as to what typical on-yomi and kun-yomi sound like. It's painful at first, but eventually it becomes natural and you get to wonder what the big deal was.
As for 一人 and 二人, "hito" and "futa" are the kun-yomi of ー and 二. There's nothing unusual about it. What is odd is that why they use kun-yomi for 1 and 2 and switch to on-yomi from 3 onwards.
Contractions and euphonic changes like がく＋こう＝がっこう are quite natural every language I've learned something about. English is full of them, but you don't notice because they're second nature. E.g.
we+will = we'll
is+not = isn't
a + hydrous = anhydrous
in + possible = impossible
If you think about how a Japanese person would say がくこう, then がっこう is not all that different and much easier to say.
