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One simple kanji character in super-simple Japanese sentence has 5 different pronunciations

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Most people will tell you that the most difficult thing about learning Japanese is dealing with kanji, the written characters originally imported from China. Not only are there more than 2,100 general-use kanji, some of them are incredibly complex, even the ones with rather mundane meanings.

Thankfully, sometimes the Japanese language throws you a bone, with kanji that show up incredibly frequently also being a snap to write. For example, the kanji meaning “sun” or “day” only has four strokes, and isn’t much more difficult to write than the numeral 8.

But just because a kanji is easy to write doesn’t mean it’s simple to read. Kanji represent concepts, not sounds, and since they were originally brought over from a different language, they can be read with a corrupted version of their original Chinese pronunciation, an indigenous Japanese pronunciation, or an irregular pronunciation that came about as a force-fit of assigning kanji with an appropriate meaning to preexisting Japanese vocabulary. Driving home that point is a tweet from Japanese Twitter user @DNApro_mikokoro, which contains a sentence (photo above left) in which the 日 kanji shows up five times... and is pronounced five different ways.

Let’s break them all down.

● In 1日/ "tsuitachi," meaning “the first of the month,” the pronunciation of 日 is part of an unbreakable set with the numeral one ● In 日曜日/ "nichiyobi," meaning “Sunday,” the first instance of 日 is pronounced "nichi" and the second "bi" ● In 祝日/ "shukujitsu," meaning “holiday,” 日 is pronounced "jitsu" ● And finally, all by itself, the fifth time 日 shows up it’s pronounced "hi," meaning “day”

Put it all together, and “3月1日は日曜日で祝日、晴れの日でした” is read “Sangatsu tsuitachi ha nichiyobi de shukujitsu, hare no hi deshita,” which translates into “March 1 was Sunday, a holiday, and a sunny day.”

By the way, look close enough and you’ll notice that two more of the kanji in the sentence, the "yo" part of "nichiyobi" (曜) and the "ha" portion of "hare" (晴), both have miniature versions of the 日 kanji as part of their components, in keeping with their respective meanings of “day of the week” and “sunny.”

“I think everyone [who’s Japanese] could read the sentence,” tweeted @DNApro_mikokoro, which is a totally reasonable assumption, as all of the vocabulary and kanji are pretty rudimentary by native-Japanese standards, who are used to their language’s heavy reliance on context for meaning. “But this is a really tough task for students studying Japanese overseas,” @DNApro_mikokoro continued.

Still, if you want to learn the language, it’s one of the hurdles you’ll have to get over. Keep at it, and remember that while some parts of Japanese can be aggravating at first glance, it’s not all bad news.

Source: Hachima Kiko

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3 Comments
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Quite interesting article.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

That's a cool sentence!

I've heard from people that have studied both Chinese and Japanese, that Japanese is more difficult even though it uses less characters, due to the multiple readings for characters. Chinese apparently only has a single reading for each character (though that reading changes depending on the language/dialect of the person reading it).

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Oh, I haven't even been aware of it. Anyway, even native Japanese sometimes mistakenly pronunciate, so if you are getting stuck in your studying, don't care about it.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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