TextFugu » Topic: Starting Kanji, little confusion (help)

Starting Kanji, little confusion (help)

Certainly — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:18:10 +0000

just a bit of confusion with something that either wasn’t explained or i am just blind to. When the kanji 訓読み readings are displayed in hiragana, it is displayed as such: ひと、ひと.つ
i see that it is either pronounced “hito” or “hito.tsu” my question is the reasoning behind that dot/period/whatever it is supposed to be. i noticed in the readings of the kanji that 一日 (ついたち) has no “hito” in it. so is the dot suggesting that it might be read as a tsu in some situations instead? if so why not just ひと,つ instead of “ひと, ひと.つ”?
any feedback would greatly help this voice in my head that keeps bothering me while im trying to learn these kanji, thx! ^_^

Reply To: Reply To: Starting Kanji, little confusion (help)

MisterM2402 [Michael] — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:17:35 +0000

The . separates what part is the kanji and what part is the furigana (extra kana on the end). In this case ひと.つ is meaning the word 一つ, the ひと part being 一 and the… other part… you know. Koichi is only choosing what he thinks are the most common/useful readings, so not all will be covered. Some kanji have a plethora of old, uncommon or irregular readings (as far as I know, 一 being read as つい in 一日 is the only place it’s read as such [could be wrong though]). Some readings you just have to learn as they are – it’s the reason he gives you lots of vocab to learn as well, so that you can learn the irregular readings as part of words.

Hope that helps :)

Reply To: Starting Kanji, little confusion (help)

Certainly — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:01:41 +0000

ahh mmk. thx. that makes sense now :)