I just did the kanji lesson 1 and I learned 3 kanji including 本 and 日. Now, I know that these two… - Feed Post by Evelien11
I just did the kanji lesson 1 and I learned 3 kanji including 本 and 日. Now, I know that these two combined form the word: 日本 (にほん) which means Japan. I checked the onyomi and kunyomi of 日 and I don't see に there, only にち. So I'm kind of confused now as to how 日 and 本 can become にほん. Am I missing something or is there a rule I don't know of yet (since I'm a beginner). Any help would be much appreciated.
posted by Evelien11
Comments 6
Wait until you check out 今日「きょう」& 明日「あした」. :D
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jukujikun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji
My advise: don't study onyomi and kunyomi, study the general meaning of the kanji and full words with meanings. Much easier to remember and much more useful :)
The main reason as to why it's pronounced as "nihon" is because this is how it is pronounced in Chinese. In a missive sent to China back in the 600s, the emperor referred himself as the "Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun", written as 日本. It was originally pronounced as "Hi-no-Moto" by the Japanese people, but in Chinese, while they share some symbols, the pronunciation is different. The deformed Chinese pronunciation as heard by the Japanese was "nippon", which then became "nihon", and they slowly started to adopt that reading, instead of the original "hi-no-moto", maybe because it was easier to pronounce, or it was more prevalent when trading, as China was the biggest trading partner at the time.
That's it for the history lesson. A lot of words were imported from the Chinese language and because of that, a lot of them won't make sense with the Japanese on'yomi and kun'yomi reading, so you can expect quite a lot of stuff like this. It's also the reason why you'll see some association of kanjis that make sense, while others don't (昨日 (previous+day for yesterday), 今日 (now+day for today), but 明日 (bright+day for tomorrow).
well...when i see "Bright + Day", i actually see "Day, Night, Day" which is kinda like saying tomorrow :P
Like xe12 said you've only seen the beginning. Exceptions will start flying at your face. English has those too, we just have "learned" our way around them. (ノ ＞ー＜ )ノ
Ahh ok, thanks guys! I had no idea it was an exception :). And thanks for the bit of history kuilfrayt, very interesting!
