Sorry, if the title is bad, but I didn’t know a good one.
So, there is one thing, which is causing confusion.
E.g. the verb: 沸かす (wakasu) is written with a Kanji representing the sound ‘wa’ and then there is the Hiragana for ‘ka’. But why?, I mean why doesn’t the Kanji have the pronunciation ‘waka’, so you can just write 沸す instead. It’s just a thing, that has always confused me, bacause I know a Kanji can have many diffetent pronunciations, but then something like in the example occurs. I appreciate any help I can get, even when it’s just a speculation.
3 comments
Kanji don’t just get reassessed. There may have been another kanji in the KA position at some point. There might have been linguistic drift of some sort. Or that might just be how it’s spelled and always has been. There’s no necessity to maximize kanji or minimize hiragana.
Also, when there are transitive-intransitive pairs present, they usually share a common kanji but have more than just the conjugatable portion of the verb different from each other, and this commonly results in words with two to three hiragana besides the kanji base.
沸く 沸かす
I’m sure there are linguistic reasons from thousands of years ago, but it seems obvious to me.
Verbs can be conjugated into many different sounds, so the Ka may change to ki or ke.
If it was kanji, you wouldn’t be able to read the change and it would make it both harder to read and harder to understand.
沸かす
沸きます
沸けられる
This is a rule about okurigana for transitive/intransitive pairs with a common root.
Basically because わかす is part of a transitive/intransitive pair with わく the common part わ is written with the kanji in both verbs and the rest is okurigana.