Weird alternate readings for words?

Index » The Japanese language

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Reply #1 - 2010 June 20, 7:08 pm
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

So I'm going through JLPT1 vocab, and I keep running into all of these words which have the same written form. Couple of examples:

他人 - たにん
... vs ...
他人 - あだびと

商人 - しょうにん
... vs ...
商人 - あきうど

So it looks like they have exactly the same meaning. I have only seen たにん being used in the wild, and あだびと seems obscure enough that it doesn't even get recognized correctly by my IME. So I guess my question is... do people actually know and use vocab like this? Or is it just some anal retentive JLPT thing that's done for completeness sake alone? I mean, it would seem like if you can't even input the words that the reading at hand is pretty archaic right?

Reply #2 - 2010 June 20, 7:20 pm
nadiatims Member
Registered: 2008-01-10 Posts: 1676

There's quite of lot of these onyomi/kunyomi pairs. I think historically, people may not have learned how to read a specific jukugo and simply guessed the pronounciation, leading to both readings eventually becoming known and accepted. In the examples you listed, I think the onyomi readings are more commonly used, and the kunyomi readings are a bit more literary. I've only ever seen あきうど in novels for instance.

Reply #3 - 2010 June 20, 7:24 pm
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

Interesting. So I would assume that you just wouldn't use 漢字 for あきうど? Or if you would, how do you know which version is being used? Or how would you actually input the word in the first place (haha)?

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Reply #4 - 2010 June 20, 7:25 pm
Katsuo M.O.D.
From: Tokyo Registered: 2007-02-06 Posts: 887 Website

I have a copy of the official JLPT test specification book. あだびと and あきうど are not in the vocabulary lists at any level.

Reply #5 - 2010 June 20, 7:31 pm
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

Katsuo wrote:

I have a copy of the official JLPT test specification book. あだびと and あきうど are not in the vocabulary lists at any level.

Ahhhhhhhhh. Well they are certainly in the Anki shared JLPT vocab deck. Sigh. I wonder if there are any other inconsistencies.

Reply #6 - 2010 June 20, 8:36 pm
nadiatims Member
Registered: 2008-01-10 Posts: 1676

Sometimes you'll see it written in hiragana, sometimes it'll be written in furigana. If it's written in Kanji, read it how you like.

Reply #7 - 2010 June 20, 9:27 pm
masaman Member
From: Colorado Registered: 2009-03-06 Posts: 486

OK. I was a bookworm growing up in Japan. My Japanese exam scores were always within top 1000 out of tens of thousands in the country, and I had read easily over 1000 books before I was 18 years old.

And until today, I had never heard of 他人 - あだびと or 商人 - あきうど...

商人 - あきんど is a fairly common way of reading it though.

Reply #8 - 2010 June 20, 9:37 pm
yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

他人 - ひと is pretty common as well.  But yeah, I've never heard of あだびと or あきうど either, although they're both imaginable words.

(I thought I had found a usage of あだびと in Genji, but it turned out 他人 was read as ことびと there, haha.)

Reply #9 - 2010 June 20, 9:45 pm
Asriel Member
From: 東京 Registered: 2008-02-26 Posts: 1343

FooSoft wrote:

Ahhhhhhhhh. Well they are certainly in the Anki shared JLPT vocab deck. Sigh. I wonder if there are any other inconsistencies.

Here's your problem. I'm not 100% on this, as I haven't looked very in-depth, but there's a lot of things some shared decks on Anki that I don't like. A lot of words with readings that aren't often used, a lot of words appearing twice, on odd levels.

It seems like they got a list of words, ran it through an automatic edict parser thing, and saved it as an anki deck.

Reply #10 - 2010 June 20, 10:25 pm
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

Ah. Well seeing that I'm already through JLPT2-4 vocab, I might as well keep going for one more month and finish the remaining 3.5k or so JLPT1 vocab. For the time being I'll just start suspending everything that my IME doesn't understand, for lack of a better source, that's probably a good standard, heh.

And yes, I agree, that shared deck has some fairly annoying aspects.

Reply #11 - 2010 June 20, 11:15 pm
Asriel Member
From: 東京 Registered: 2008-02-26 Posts: 1343

I'm not saying they're terrible decks, not by any means. I'm not saying that edict's definitions are the worst things ever -- they are often pretty good for quick translations.

I just wouldn't trust everything in the deck from start to finish. Which deck exactly are you using? I'd like to take a look through it and maybe check it a little bit more.

Reply #12 - 2010 June 20, 11:17 pm
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

Asriel wrote:

I'm not saying they're terrible decks, not by any means. I'm not saying that edict's definitions are the worst things ever -- they are often pretty good for quick translations.

I just wouldn't trust everything in the deck from start to finish. Which deck exactly are you using? I'd like to take a look through it and maybe check it a little bit more.

The one I'm using is the "JLPT Vocabulary" deck (8311 facts)

Reply #13 - 2010 June 20, 11:29 pm
Asriel Member
From: 東京 Registered: 2008-02-26 Posts: 1343

Yeah, from the few (maybe about 10?) entries I checked, it seems that they're mostly edict definitions. Which is OK, but I'd like some context, hopefully not from the tanaka corpus (example sentences plugin)

Although, perhaps I'm just missing something, but how does そんな appear on the JLPT1 list??? そんなに is JLPT3 according to the deck, but そんな is JLPT1?
other anomalies include 七日, 超える, 六 (む as the reading), etc...

It's probably a good list of words to learn, but there's some weird things in there...

Reply #14 - 2010 June 21, 12:27 am
FooSoft Member
From: Seattle, WA Registered: 2009-02-15 Posts: 513 Website

Yeah, 明日 (あす) is JLPT3 but 明日(あした) is JLPT1 haha. Kind of hard to believe.

Reply #15 - 2010 June 21, 5:53 am
captal Member
From: San Jose Registered: 2008-03-22 Posts: 677

masaman wrote:

OK. I was a bookworm growing up in Japan. My Japanese exam scores were always within top 1000 out of tens of thousands in the country, and I had read easily over 1000 books before I was 18 years old.

And until today, I had never heard of 他人 - あだびと or 商人 - あきうど...

商人 - あきんど is a fairly common way of reading it though.

My gf was definitely not a book worm, but she was walking by when I was looking at this thread and she said "あきうど？あきんどじゃない？”

She's also never heard of あだびと

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