Does appending じゅう (Juu) to a noun mean “all over” that noun?

10 comments

1. This 中(じゅう) has nothing to do with this 十(じゅう)

2. In the case of 世界中(せかいじゅう) it’s actually using the kanji 中 meaning middle, inside, or all over like you inferred, not 十 which is 10 though both are pronounced the same. You are correct though that attaching 中 to a noun (or a place really) does make it mean “all over (place), throughout (place)”!

   Example: 村中 (むらじゅう) = throughout the village or all over the village

3. I think you are encountering 中(ちゅう/じゅう) like 世界中 せかいじゅう、授業中　じゅぎょうちゅう、the former 中 add the meaning of “all over~” while the latter 中 means “during, within~”

4. Others have explained already so instead I want to let you know you’re spelling ありがとう wrong in your comments, don’t forget the う!

5. What are you using to learn Japanese? Correct me if I’m wrong but this surely should be explained in any beginner resource?

6. The じゅう here is 中 which when added as a suffix means “throughout” or “in the process of”. Though I need someone to correct me if I’m wrong because in the second case I mention it might be read as なか instead.

7. To add a bit to the other responses here, 中 is both ちゅう and also なか. You may know it better as なか? They both mean “middle”. ちゅう is the onyomi (Chinese) pronunciation, which in modern Mandarin is Zhōng. 中国 is ちゅうごく in Japanese, but Zhōngguó in Mandarin.

   Meanwhile, なか is the native Japanese reading (kunyomi). I’m not an expert on this front, but as I remember it being explained in Japanese class, when they imported the Chinese writing system, they associated words to Kanji by virtue of the meaning. E.g. 中 = middle, naka = middle, thus 中 = なか. However, they also straight up kept a lot of multi-character words from Chinese, and instead of assigning single-character equivalents, making up new characters, or creating some entirely new multi-character combination logic, they just kept it in Chinese. For these they used a localized version of the Chinese pronunciation. So, many Japanese compound kanji words have _similar_ pronunciations to their Chinese progenitors.

   Anyway, this is why most kanji have two readings: the native Japanese word that was assigned to it (usually on a 1:1 basis), and then a Chinese-based pronunciation that’s typically used in multi-character words imported from Chinese.

   One more thing about all the myriad ちゅう words in Japanese. 注 (note; comment) is also ちゅう, but in Mandarin it’s zhù. So in Chinese, you have zhù and Zhōng both mapping to ちゅう in Japanese, which I suspect is due to Japanese having fewer sounds and tones. Japanese onyomi sounds are a lot more limited than the Chinese source material, which is why there seems like so much redundancy. It’s generally not much of as problem though, since the onyomi is mostly only used for longer words, so the ultimate meaning will be clear. But if you take just one character’s sound (via sound alone) it’s very hard to know what kanji it goes with without any context.

8. this is why you are supposed to learn words in kanji and not all in hiragana

9. 中の読み方（音読み）はたいてい「ちゅう」だけど，ときどき「れんだく」ということのため「ぢゅう」or「じゅう」のどちいらかになります。

10. Just an aside but I find it helpful to think of 中 as meaning throughout rather than middle as 年中 means throughout the year as oppose to in the middle of the year.

    While 内 I like to think of as within eg 年内 within the year or before the year has ended or sometime within the year z happened.

    And 央 as centre (which in my head equates to the middle more than anything). It makes 中央 (central) make more sense to me “throughout the middle/centre”