I see both ニチ (nichi) and ジツ (jitsu) listed as on-yomi for 日. And the on-yomi ホン (hon) listed for 本. The on-yomi ホン (hon) for 本 makes sense since the word 日本 is most commonly read “nihon.” But I am confused where the “ni” reading comes from.
Since 日本 is jukugo it would make most sense to me for ニ (ni) to be listed as an on-yomi. But に (ni) isn’t even listed as a kun-yomi. I do see に (ni) listed as a nanori at least. So does this mean the kanji in 日本 are read with the nanori and on-yomi readings respectively? Or is the ニチ (nichi) on-yomi reading for 日 shortened to ニ (ni) in this special scenario?
I know there are going to be many special cases with kanji but I want to understand how to categorize these special cases in my head. Should I consider the チ (chi) in ニチ (nichi) as dropped in 日本? Or consider the reading of 日本 to be part nanori part on-yomi? Or do kanji often have readings not listed in the on-yomi or kun-yomi (other than names)?
A strange “special case” since 日 is read like に (ni) and has the furigana of に (ni) for so many words in Japanese (日本, 日本人, 日本語, 日本酒, etc). Thanks!
3 comments
as a whole, it’s better to learn kanji through words themselves instead of focusing so hard on the individual readings of individual kanji. the 日 in 日本 is read as に because they decided to write it like that, basically. there are so many edge cases where kanji are pronounced a certain way only in a certain word that you would go crazy trying to learn and understand every single reading of every kanji
Agree with other commenter about edge cases; particularly for words that would have been part of early Japanese the Kanji are often retrofits. E.g. 大人
For this particular word, there is some etymology info available [here](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC).
Originally the pronunciation was にっぽん, presumably following the same linguistic pattern as words like 一歩(いっぽ) and 日記(にっき) where “chi” sounds are replaced with a glottal stop in compound words.
So, the onyomi in “Nippon” still counts as “nichi”, and the shift to “Nihon” is based on linguistic drift, making it an exception to the rules.
I asked this question in r/LearnKanji as well and received some good responses. Here is a [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnKanji/comments/17pclgj/why_is_%E3%83%8B_not_listed_as_an_onyomi_for_%E6%97%A5_given_its/) for those of you interested 😇