Hiragana don’t have kanji, kanji have Hiragana readings. So the taberu reading is the kanji’s kun, or Japanese, reading. 食 in compounds is read shoku, (and maybe others), and is the kanji’s on, the Chinese, reading.
Tldr: I’m not an expert, but I think it’s to distinguish words.
I believe that this has to do with the various ways kanji can be read. “食’s” kun’yomi use (in this case, it’s used only in verbs) have its root words’ mora extending from the kanji with the verbal conjugated (る/う) mora following it. 食べる、食う、食らう、食む are all possible kun’yomi readings. I’m not sure why “べる” adds the “べ” because we’d know from it being a “る” verb without any other “る” or “godan る” verb variants what the proper reading is. For “食う（くう）” and “食らう（くらう）,” the extra “ra” distinguishes the two verbs. In “食む（はむ）,” the “む” indicates that the kun’yomi for 食 in this case is “は” (especially because there aren’t any other 3-mora variants of the kanji with a “mu” mora ending). There’s also (I believe) patterns in Japanese linguistic history, especially with transitive/intransitive verbs’ separation that necessitate verbs’ root mora to extend from the kanji in order to better distinguish the words and/or to add better consistency. I’m by no means an expert though, so please take all of this as just my assumption from having studied the language for a while.
Kanji assign meaning. Hiragana assign sounds. This isn’t exactly how it works, but it helps simplify things. The word あめ (ame) can be written several ways in kanji, and woupd mean different things. 雨 (rain) or 飴 (candy). Both pronounced the same, and using the same hiragana.
it’s the reverse, words happen to have both a pronunciation and a spelling, and kanji overlap with certain pronunciations on average because they were borrowed or adapted from chinese at various set points.
the reason why more of the word isn’t kanji is twofold. first of all, any part of a word that gets conjugated can’t be kanji (or at least it isn’t any more, it was a long, long time ago), so all “changeable” chunks of a word are written with kana only.
the reason why the root word たべ is 食べ and not just 食 is… i have no idea. either it was written that way to help distinguish it from 食う (kuu = to eat, though a more casual/rough word), or it just so happened to be that way over time. there’s often no strict set of rules for how words evolve, each one has it’s own history. however, it’s far from the only verb that has a bit of “unchanging kana” sticking out of the base/root kanji, you’ll definitely run into others as you go.
The answer is that in classical Japanese the word was 食ぶ. 飽きる, 教える, and 揺する are given as other similar examples of kana spellings whose rationale is not immediately obvious without knowing the forms they’re derived from.
ひらがな can be masked by 漢字 [kanji] entirely or partially.
the number of mora (~syllables) that are masked by a single kanji vary.
漢字 have different meanings. so even if two words have the same ひらがな they can be different meanings thanks to the 漢字 masks.
guys no need to overcomplicate things lol
It’s the other way around my guy, don’t overthink it… た is how you pronounce 食 when it’s next to べる or in other words, the verb to eat 🙂
i think there are 2 questions involved here
1. why some hiragana have kanji associated with only one syllable; and 2. why 食べる is 食べる but not 食る
on 1. Japanese did not have a writing system before Chinese characters were adapted. so they were free to slap whatever kanji they found appropriate to refer to the Japanese concept. for example, kanji 山 means mountain, in Japanese やま means mountain, so kanji 山 is associated with the Japanese concept やま and pronounce as やま.
There are other one syllable kanjis like 井 (い)、火 (か) etc. or you can also get extremes like 政 (まつりごと)、承る (うけたまわる)。
2. theres a name for those kanas going after a kanji, 送り仮名 okurigana, and there are certain rules to apply them.
one rule for okurigana is to use them for a conjugation suffix (in a verb). And the word stem should be in kanji.
in example 食べる, 食 (た) is the word stem, and べる is the conjugation suffix。
in other conjugation suffixes it will be 食-べます、食-べない、食-べろ etc.
and you might ask, all conjugation suffixes have べ anyway, so why not 食る then?
because Japanese grammar…if you use たべ as the word stem, then in the conjugations 未然形 irrealis (食-べ) and 連用形 conjunctive (食-べ), they will just become one kanji 食, which means the conjugation suffix is missing, and thats not “allowed”. So the word stem has to be 食 (た) for this verb.
and note, there exists verbs with no word stem, like 寝る、見る、する… but only a few of them are out there.
edit: formatting
It’s really hard to post in this subreddit without pissing people off even though I’m at the bare bones level of learning one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. Sorry for trying to get a better idea of what to do and not do I guess :/
I think you’re thinking about this from the wrong angle. You’re better off imagining that in cases like this, the hiragana exist to provide context for the idea kanji represents.
So for your example, 食 = eat, food
食べる Adding the hiragana both makes it clear it is a verb here so the correct vocab reading is inferred (or memorized if you’re learning)
昼食 In this example the reading is (ちゅうしょく) which is different but can be inferred the same way from using the other kanji to create context and therefore a complete vocab term
Remember most kanji are ideograms so they’re just images to depict ideas. Kinda like ancient emojis. 🚗🪐🕐🏃🏻♀️
10 comments
Hiragana don’t have kanji, kanji have Hiragana readings. So the taberu reading is the kanji’s kun, or Japanese, reading. 食 in compounds is read shoku, (and maybe others), and is the kanji’s on, the Chinese, reading.
Tldr: I’m not an expert, but I think it’s to distinguish words.
I believe that this has to do with the various ways kanji can be read. “食’s” kun’yomi use (in this case, it’s used only in verbs) have its root words’ mora extending from the kanji with the verbal conjugated (る/う) mora following it. 食べる、食う、食らう、食む are all possible kun’yomi readings. I’m not sure why “べる” adds the “べ” because we’d know from it being a “る” verb without any other “る” or “godan る” verb variants what the proper reading is. For “食う（くう）” and “食らう（くらう）,” the extra “ra” distinguishes the two verbs. In “食む（はむ）,” the “む” indicates that the kun’yomi for 食 in this case is “は” (especially because there aren’t any other 3-mora variants of the kanji with a “mu” mora ending). There’s also (I believe) patterns in Japanese linguistic history, especially with transitive/intransitive verbs’ separation that necessitate verbs’ root mora to extend from the kanji in order to better distinguish the words and/or to add better consistency. I’m by no means an expert though, so please take all of this as just my assumption from having studied the language for a while.
Kanji assign meaning. Hiragana assign sounds. This isn’t exactly how it works, but it helps simplify things. The word あめ (ame) can be written several ways in kanji, and woupd mean different things. 雨 (rain) or 飴 (candy). Both pronounced the same, and using the same hiragana.
it’s the reverse, words happen to have both a pronunciation and a spelling, and kanji overlap with certain pronunciations on average because they were borrowed or adapted from chinese at various set points.
the reason why more of the word isn’t kanji is twofold. first of all, any part of a word that gets conjugated can’t be kanji (or at least it isn’t any more, it was a long, long time ago), so all “changeable” chunks of a word are written with kana only.
the reason why the root word たべ is 食べ and not just 食 is… i have no idea. either it was written that way to help distinguish it from 食う (kuu = to eat, though a more casual/rough word), or it just so happened to be that way over time. there’s often no strict set of rules for how words evolve, each one has it’s own history. however, it’s far from the only verb that has a bit of “unchanging kana” sticking out of the base/root kanji, you’ll definitely run into others as you go.
Like everyone else answering I did not know the answer to this question, but unlike them, I looked it up: https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13208894713
The answer is that in classical Japanese the word was 食ぶ. 飽きる, 教える, and 揺する are given as other similar examples of kana spellings whose rationale is not immediately obvious without knowing the forms they’re derived from.
ひらがな can be masked by 漢字 [kanji] entirely or partially.
the number of mora (~syllables) that are masked by a single kanji vary.
漢字 have different meanings. so even if two words have the same ひらがな they can be different meanings thanks to the 漢字 masks.
guys no need to overcomplicate things lol
It’s the other way around my guy, don’t overthink it… た is how you pronounce 食 when it’s next to べる or in other words, the verb to eat 🙂
i think there are 2 questions involved here
1. why some hiragana have kanji associated with only one syllable; and
2. why 食べる is 食べる but not 食る
on 1. Japanese did not have a writing system before Chinese characters were adapted. so they were free to slap whatever kanji they found appropriate to refer to the Japanese concept. for example, kanji 山 means mountain, in Japanese やま means mountain, so kanji 山 is associated with the Japanese concept やま and pronounce as やま.
There are other one syllable kanjis like 井 (い)、火 (か) etc. or you can also get extremes like 政 (まつりごと)、承る (うけたまわる)。
2.
theres a name for those kanas going after a kanji, 送り仮名 okurigana, and there are certain rules to apply them.
one rule for okurigana is to use them for a conjugation suffix (in a verb). And the word stem should be in kanji.
in example 食べる, 食 (た) is the word stem, and べる is the conjugation suffix。
in other conjugation suffixes it will be 食-べます、食-べない、食-べろ etc.
and you might ask, all conjugation suffixes have べ anyway, so why not 食る then?
because Japanese grammar…if you use たべ as the word stem, then in the conjugations 未然形 irrealis (食-べ) and 連用形 conjunctive (食-べ), they will just become one kanji 食, which means the conjugation suffix is missing, and thats not “allowed”. So the word stem has to be 食 (た) for this verb.
and note, there exists verbs with no word stem, like 寝る、見る、する… but only a few of them are out there.
edit: formatting
It’s really hard to post in this subreddit without pissing people off even though I’m at the bare bones level of learning one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. Sorry for trying to get a better idea of what to do and not do I guess :/
I think you’re thinking about this from the wrong angle. You’re better off imagining that in cases like this, the hiragana exist to provide context for the idea kanji represents.
So for your example, 食 = eat, food
食べる Adding the hiragana both makes it clear it is a verb here so the correct vocab reading is inferred (or memorized if you’re learning)
昼食 In this example the reading is (ちゅうしょく) which is different but can be inferred the same way from using the other kanji to create context and therefore a complete vocab term
Remember most kanji are ideograms so they’re just images to depict ideas. Kinda like ancient emojis. 🚗🪐🕐🏃🏻♀️