So I’m pretty early in my Japanese writing and comprehension journey but I’ve never known why specifically the character 日 has so many pronunciations (compared to other kanji) ?
The kunyomi is ひ、び、か。And the Onyomi is ニチ and ジツ。But when looking at compound kanji involving that character, it takes on MANY, many more pronounciations like あ、あき、いる、く、くき, ETC ETC
Examples of this include 明日 (tomorrow) being pronounced ‘ashita’ instead of perhaps ‘ashinichi’.
And 今日(today) being pronounced ‘Kyou’ instead of ‘kunnichi’.
Another one is 一昨日, where it’s pronounced ‘ototoi’.
Is there any historical or linguistic reason for this? Or is it just a quirk of the language?
1 comment
Both.
Japanese was its own language before writing. Then they had contact with China and imported writing.
They discovered the meaning of each character and assigned a Japanese meaning to the character. Sometimes these words needed to be assigned characters which deviate from an assumed pattern to fit.
Chinese was used a a prestige language long enough that the Chinese pronunciations didn’t die out. On top of that, depending on when a word was imported, it brought new on’yomi.