I don't understand the onyomi and kunyomi for numbers in kanji. I'm pretty sure you read a kanji… - Feed Post by Shadowkyuubi
I don't understand the onyomi and kunyomi for numbers in kanji. I'm pretty sure you read a kanji by its kunyomi when its by itself or with other hiragana and onyomi in compound kanji words. For example: the kanji for one, 一 (ichi) is pronounced using the onyomi even though the kanji is by itself, so shouldn't it be read by the kunyomi, hitotsu?
posted by Shadowkyuubi
Comments 3
There are some exception to the rule "kunyomi - alone", "onyomi" - pair.
Examples of those kind of words are called Okurigana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okurigana) and Yojijukugo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo.
There are also a set of words (http://www.kanjidamage.com/tags/43) which dropped the hiragana but still have the Okurigana pronunciation.
Thank you
More to the point: "hitotsu" is written as 一つ
The kunyomi for 一 (ichi) is usually listed as something like ひと.つ [hito.tsu] (the dot meaning that つ [tsu] is okurigana added after the kanji).
I'd be surprised if you looked at 一 (ichi) used completely on its own and stopped to think about whether it should read it as "ひと" (hito) instead of "いち" (ichi)... ^^
