You can use both and will get slightly different meanings. 人間 means something like humanity or a representative entity of humanity, while 人 denotes a person.
Over simplified but it really does just carry the same nuance of human vs person.
At least from my experience, 人間 is used when there’s something non-human that you can contrast humans or humanity against (e.g. an anime with demons or the like). If your intention is to say that no human could do something, so therefore it must have been something non-human that did it, then yes, I believe you would use 人間. Otherwise, if what you mean to say is just that no one would do something, that’d be something like 誰もそんなことはしない.
Yes, 人間 can be used metaphorically. A classic example is the novel 人間失格.
It’s also used in insults like クソ人間 and 人間のカス.
Is the first one “hitokan” ?
okay so I’m just getting into kanji (i know 5 maybe). Can someone give a basic explanation as to why “人” isn’t pronounced as ひと in 人間, can you intuitively figure out yhe different pronounciations? or do you just need to know the word beforehand?
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You can use both and will get slightly different meanings. 人間 means something like humanity or a representative entity of humanity, while 人 denotes a person.
Over simplified but it really does just carry the same nuance of human vs person.
At least from my experience, 人間 is used when there’s something non-human that you can contrast humans or humanity against (e.g. an anime with demons or the like). If your intention is to say that no human could do something, so therefore it must have been something non-human that did it, then yes, I believe you would use 人間. Otherwise, if what you mean to say is just that no one would do something, that’d be something like 誰もそんなことはしない.
Yes, 人間 can be used metaphorically. A classic example is the novel 人間失格.
It’s also used in insults like クソ人間 and 人間のカス.
Is the first one “hitokan” ?
okay so I’m just getting into kanji (i know 5 maybe). Can someone give a basic explanation as to why “人” isn’t pronounced as ひと in 人間, can you intuitively figure out yhe different pronounciations? or do you just need to know the word beforehand?