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毎年 -- まいとし vs. まいねん

After a recent thread about knowing which readings to use for kanji, the current 'recent echo' is interesting.

The post is about vocabulary lesson chapter 7 毎年 having 'まいとし' furigana and 'mainen' roumaji. The roumaji has now been changed to 'maitoshi' to match the furigana.

As I understand it, まいとし is the more common reading anyway, but the book I'm reading only lists まいねん for meaning 'every year'.
(The book is old though, as it was bought in Tokyo in 1986 -- 'Japanese for Beginners' by Gakken)

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to look at some more 'adverbials of frequency' and the chosen kanji readings.

I've tried to first use what I can find in the lessons, if possible. For the rest, I picked whatever I've guessed to be the most common...

[LAST x ; THIS x ; NEXT x ; EVERY x]
-day:
昨日 'kinou' ; 今日 'kyou' ; 明日 'ashita' ; 毎日 MAI・NICHI
-week:
先週 SEN・SHUU ; 今週 KON・SHUU ; 来週 RAI・SHUU ; 毎週 MAI・SHUU
-month:
先月 SEN・GETSU ; 今月 KON・GETSU ; 来月 RAI・GETSU ; 毎月 MAI・tsuki
-year:
去年 KYO・NEN (先年 SEN・NEN) ; 今年 KO*・toshi ; 来年 RAI・NEN ; 毎年 MAI・toshi
-morning:
昨朝 SAKU・CHOU ; 今朝 'kesa' ; 明朝 MYOU・CHOU ; 毎朝 MAI・asa
-evening/night:
夕べ yuu・be ; 今晩 KON・BAN ; 明晩 MYOU・BAN ; 毎晩 MAI・BAN

---
DICTIONARY: http://www.jisho.org

昨 - SAKU
先 - SEN, saki
去 - KYO, KO
今 - KIN, KON, ima
明 - MYOU, MIN, MEI
来 - TAI, RAI, ki, ko
毎 - MAI, goto

週 - SHUU
月 - GATSU, GETSU, tsuki
年 - NEN, toshi
日 - JITSU, NICHI, hi
朝 - CHOU, asa
晩 - BAN
夕 - SEKI, yuu
---
・ = kanji reading separator
UPPER CASE = 音読み「おんよみ」
lower case = 訓読み「くんよみ」
'quoted' = 熟字訓「じゅくじくん」-- special reading of whole kanji compound.
posted by mog86uk

Comments 1

  • mog86uk
    mog86uk
    Oh bleh~
    That post actually turned out pretty beautiful compared to the hideous mess I was anticipating, but I ruined it slightly by accidentally adding 先年 in there...
    It's quite hard to do a post like this without preview and being able to edit after posting, lol.

    先年 "SEN・NEN" means something like 'in recent years' or 'former years'? and thus 去年 "KYO・NEN" is used instead.

    As for some other anomalies:
    - 先日 "SEN・JITSU" means 'the other day' or 'a few days ago'.
    - 来日 "RAI・NICHI" means 'coming to Japan'
    - 今年 "KO*・TOSHI", this "KO" is shortened form of the 音読み "KON", but I don't know the reason why it is shortened. There probably is a good reason? Anyone know?

    There's probably some errors in there, but most of the information was taken from jisho.org, so hopefully not too many. Not sure about whether I chose the most common readings though? ^^
mog86uk

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