Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (January 26, 2024)

2 comments

1. I’m a few months into learning Kanji and have been surprised at how many Kanji share readings. I don’t know if it’s just confirmation bias or a conscious choice of the KKLC author, but out of the ~250 Kanji that I’ve learned so far I’ve seen a whole lot of こう, しゅう, and しん readings. Not complaining, I just can’t help but wonder if Japanese contains more homophones than English as a result of this?

2. Hello,

   I am currently learning colors in Japanese and for the most part I understand it pretty well but just wanted to make sure I am understanding a few things:

   1. Is it true that people in Japan more commonly use ” Pinku” and ” Orenji” as opposed to “Momoiro” and “Daidaiiro”. If so, any reason why the katakana pronunciation has become more popular? Is there certain situations where you would use one over the other?

   2) Adding “iro” to the end of the color is only for when you are talking about colors correct?

   For example, If I am taking about a gold medal – I would say “Kin” because im talking more about the metal used for the medal / the status/ranking (placing gold), not so much the color

   Whereas if someone asked me what color something was and it was gold, I would say “Kiniro”?

   Also, as far as Bronze goes, would I use “Dou-iro”? I couldn’t find any resources that uses Bronze in this way so I wasn’t sure if that rule also applied to Bronze.