HomeJapaneseI’m about 2 months in to learning on Duolingo and this is the second time over the last couple of days that I’ve got stuck with a similar issue. How does hachi and toshi become hassai??
I’m about 2 months in to learning on Duolingo and this is the second time over the last couple of days that I’ve got stuck with a similar issue. How does hachi and toshi become hassai??
I’m about 2 months in to learning on Duolingo and this is the second time over the last couple of days that I’ve got stuck with a similar issue. How does hachi and toshi become hassai??
Kanji can change their readings based on how they are used in sentences. In this case, toshi is used as a counter for years (pronounced “sai”). Hachisai is changed to hassai when put together. Numbers can be read differently when attached to counters. Like nine things is kokonotsu.
Kanji can have multiple readings, but Duolingo doesn’t exactly have a way to show all of them. (or sometimes even the most useful one). So here, the same kanji for “toshi” can be read as “sai”, denoting that the preceding numbers mean “years old”.
As for why what could be “hachisai” turns into “hassai”: If rendered into hiragana, you’d see that the “ち” turns into a “small つ” when used with a counter (here 歳), so it would look like はっさい instead of はちさい.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen 歳 read as “toshi”, despite it also being translated as “years” in this case. If I were in charge of creating these lessons, I would have put “sai” above the kanji.
And on that note, they also have “hachifun” over 八分 when it should be pronounced “happun,” and “nanibun” instead of “nanbun.”
You may be aware that many kanji actually originate from Chinese, in which they are called hanzi. These kanji have two sets of readings, known as 音読み (on’yomi, Chinese reading) and 訓読み (kun’yomi, Japanese reading).
In 歳’s case, its on’yomi are サイ and セイ, while its kun’yomi are とし, とせ, and よわい. Get used to seeing on’yomi in katakana and kun’yomi in hiragana, by the way. It’s a standard way to differentiate them at a glance.
When to use the on’yomi or kun’yomi reading is something learners often struggle with initially. Duolingo likely does a very poor job teaching you them. I recommend giving [WaniKani](https://www.wanikani.com) a shot for this purpose. It’s pretty much the best thing for structured teaching of kanji and their various meanings/readings.
I also recommend you check out [this article](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/) by Tofugu. It teaches the history of why exactly there are so many readings, as well as generalized rules for when one is more appropriate than another. No rule is 100% in Japanese, but it’ll get you close.
Use” takoboto japanese dictionary” on your pc or as an app on your phone. Best dictionary you’ll ever find with examples and verb declanations. There you would find out that each kanji can have many readings.
Also in my personal opinion, learning language just from duolingo alone, isn’t the way to go, especially for japanese.
Anyways, good luck with learning!
As other people have commented, there are multiple readings to kanji and when multiple kanji are put into a single word those readings can be different than when they’re individual. I will say that I think this is pretty emblematic of why duolingo is not a great way to actually learn Japanese, because it just drops you in and gives absolutely no instruction. Might I recommend you consider another method of learning? The Genki textbooks are pretty much the standard around these parts. They’re not flashy and fun the way Duolingo is, but they work.
歳 can be read as さい
八(はち) + 歳 (さい) = 八歳(はっさい)
Just like five and teen becomes fifteen. Just need to memorize it. Language is not always logical.
i think it’s just easier to say
welcome to japanese. pretty much every kanji does this. it’s .., a delight
Anytime you’re referring to the age the formula is (number + age counter) , you often have to drag out the pronunciation of the number to fit the counter 歳 (さい) such as 一歳。いっさい
And
八歳。はっさい
As others have pointed out, kanji can have multiple readings. There’s a little bit of brute-force memorization that goes into learning kanji.
Unfortunately, Duolingo doesn’t explain this at all from what I remember. You’ll quickly find that Duolingo becomes pretty obsolete pretty quickly. If you really want to continue with Duolingo I suggest picking up some other tools alongside it.
This is kinda why duolingo is shit as a sole or main resource for language learning. Theres no grammar explanations. Imo, duolingo is good as a non-reliant vocabulary practicing resource and thats about it. Kanji can be words and also they can be components of words, so sometimes they are pronounced differently when grouped with other kanji to form other words. Sometimes kanji of a certain meaning will group together to form a word that seems totally unrelated to the kanji used to write it. What works best for me, is to not try to learn every way every kanji can be pronounced, and instead just learn words as i come to them, then learn the kanji that its written with, accept that that is the kanji it is written with, and just continue w my life free of kanji stress. I recommend finding a good textbook for self learning that has grammar and cultural lessons to go along with your language journey. I use genki, which can come w CDs that have the hw answers on them so you have something that will correct your mistakes. But japanese is lucky that it has multiple different decent textbooks so that theres a good chance at least one of them will work well for everyone.
歳 is -sai for it on’yomi reading. Its being shown as its kun’yomi reading is honestly a mistake on Duolingo’s part. Also sometimes parts of a word will be dropped for better speaking flow (as I understand it) just like some consonants may become softer.
sometimes, language isnt logical, so it helps to remember “oh, maybe some rules are being broken and i shouldnt try to make sense of it”
this is one of the main reasons why – in my opinion – duolingo isn’t that great for learning japanese. i’ve been studying japanese for nearly 2 years now at a university, and while duolingo is very close to the textbooks, there are by far not enough grammar explanations to suffice as a standalone language learning ressource. (also since i’ve encountered numerous errors with kanji-reading and furigana)
How does eight and ten become eighteen?
This is one of the biggest issues with duolingo, I recommend switching to genki or tae kim, they actually explain things
Not answering your question but: I’ve been told by native Japanese speakers that Duolingo is terrible for learning Japanese.
Welcome to the “because it’s easier to say” explanation of Japanese.
… Good luck!
The answer is: “Ahh…even sensei doesn’t know”
Kanji have more than one reading depending on context.
Have fun.
This is exactly the reason why you shouldn’t learn with duolingo alone. It doesn’t explain enough things about grammar and Kanji. Read up about onyomi and kunyomi, counter words and get yourself a textbook if you’re serious about learning japanese. Duolingo is tbh only good to learn some vocab and get a feeling for sentence structure.
I see people gave you different explanations for this, on a side note, if you are serious about learning Japanese, I would recomend turning off the romanized version of the pronunciation and switch it to japanese.
24 comments
Kanji can change their readings based on how they are used in sentences. In this case, toshi is used as a counter for years (pronounced “sai”). Hachisai is changed to hassai when put together. Numbers can be read differently when attached to counters. Like nine things is kokonotsu.
Kanji can have multiple readings, but Duolingo doesn’t exactly have a way to show all of them. (or sometimes even the most useful one). So here, the same kanji for “toshi” can be read as “sai”, denoting that the preceding numbers mean “years old”.
As for why what could be “hachisai” turns into “hassai”: If rendered into hiragana, you’d see that the “ち” turns into a “small つ” when used with a counter (here 歳), so it would look like はっさい instead of はちさい.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen 歳 read as “toshi”, despite it also being translated as “years” in this case. If I were in charge of creating these lessons, I would have put “sai” above the kanji.
And on that note, they also have “hachifun” over 八分 when it should be pronounced “happun,” and “nanibun” instead of “nanbun.”
You may be aware that many kanji actually originate from Chinese, in which they are called hanzi. These kanji have two sets of readings, known as 音読み (on’yomi, Chinese reading) and 訓読み (kun’yomi, Japanese reading).
In 歳’s case, its on’yomi are サイ and セイ, while its kun’yomi are とし, とせ, and よわい. Get used to seeing on’yomi in katakana and kun’yomi in hiragana, by the way. It’s a standard way to differentiate them at a glance.
When to use the on’yomi or kun’yomi reading is something learners often struggle with initially. Duolingo likely does a very poor job teaching you them. I recommend giving [WaniKani](https://www.wanikani.com) a shot for this purpose. It’s pretty much the best thing for structured teaching of kanji and their various meanings/readings.
I also recommend you check out [this article](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/) by Tofugu. It teaches the history of why exactly there are so many readings, as well as generalized rules for when one is more appropriate than another. No rule is 100% in Japanese, but it’ll get you close.
Use” takoboto japanese dictionary” on your pc or as an app on your phone. Best dictionary you’ll ever find with examples and verb declanations. There you would find out that each kanji can have many readings.
Also in my personal opinion, learning language just from duolingo alone, isn’t the way to go, especially for japanese.
Anyways, good luck with learning!
As other people have commented, there are multiple readings to kanji and when multiple kanji are put into a single word those readings can be different than when they’re individual.
I will say that I think this is pretty emblematic of why duolingo is not a great way to actually learn Japanese, because it just drops you in and gives absolutely no instruction. Might I recommend you consider another method of learning? The Genki textbooks are pretty much the standard around these parts. They’re not flashy and fun the way Duolingo is, but they work.
歳 can be read as さい
八(はち) + 歳 (さい) = 八歳(はっさい)
Just like five and teen becomes fifteen. Just need to memorize it. Language is not always logical.
i think it’s just easier to say
welcome to japanese. pretty much every kanji does this. it’s .., a delight
Anytime you’re referring to the age the formula is (number + age counter) , you often have to drag out the pronunciation of the number to fit the counter 歳 (さい) such as
一歳。いっさい
And
八歳。はっさい
As others have pointed out, kanji can have multiple readings. There’s a little bit of brute-force memorization that goes into learning kanji.
Unfortunately, Duolingo doesn’t explain this at all from what I remember. You’ll quickly find that Duolingo becomes pretty obsolete pretty quickly. If you really want to continue with Duolingo I suggest picking up some other tools alongside it.
This is kinda why duolingo is shit as a sole or main resource for language learning. Theres no grammar explanations. Imo, duolingo is good as a non-reliant vocabulary practicing resource and thats about it.
Kanji can be words and also they can be components of words, so sometimes they are pronounced differently when grouped with other kanji to form other words. Sometimes kanji of a certain meaning will group together to form a word that seems totally unrelated to the kanji used to write it. What works best for me, is to not try to learn every way every kanji can be pronounced, and instead just learn words as i come to them, then learn the kanji that its written with, accept that that is the kanji it is written with, and just continue w my life free of kanji stress.
I recommend finding a good textbook for self learning that has grammar and cultural lessons to go along with your language journey. I use genki, which can come w CDs that have the hw answers on them so you have something that will correct your mistakes. But japanese is lucky that it has multiple different decent textbooks so that theres a good chance at least one of them will work well for everyone.
歳 is -sai for it on’yomi reading. Its being shown as its kun’yomi reading is honestly a mistake on Duolingo’s part. Also sometimes parts of a word will be dropped for better speaking flow (as I understand it) just like some consonants may become softer.
sometimes, language isnt logical, so it helps to remember “oh, maybe some rules are being broken and i shouldnt try to make sense of it”
this is one of the main reasons why – in my opinion – duolingo isn’t that great for learning japanese. i’ve been studying japanese for nearly 2 years now at a university, and while duolingo is very close to the textbooks, there are by far not enough grammar explanations to suffice as a standalone language learning ressource. (also since i’ve encountered numerous errors with kanji-reading and furigana)
How does eight and ten become eighteen?
This is one of the biggest issues with duolingo, I recommend switching to genki or tae kim, they actually explain things
Not answering your question but: I’ve been told by native Japanese speakers that Duolingo is terrible for learning Japanese.
Welcome to the “because it’s easier to say” explanation of Japanese.
… Good luck!
The answer is: “Ahh…even sensei doesn’t know”
Kanji have more than one reading depending on context.
Have fun.
This is exactly the reason why you shouldn’t learn with duolingo alone. It doesn’t explain enough things about grammar and Kanji. Read up about onyomi and kunyomi, counter words and get yourself a textbook if you’re serious about learning japanese. Duolingo is tbh only good to learn some vocab and get a feeling for sentence structure.
I see people gave you different explanations for this, on a side note, if you are serious about learning Japanese, I would recomend turning off the romanized version of the pronunciation and switch it to japanese.