国 is terrorizing me

I’ve heard that にん is generally for professions, like 料理人, while other descriptors use じん, like 老人. Nationalities always use じん.

Of course there are exceptions.

And times when it’s ひと or びと instead.

And also there’s 人参. :carrot:

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And in that sense, I want to welcome you all into the realm of the crabigator, 鰐国 (わにくに)

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Shouldn’t that be がくごく? :smirk:

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Nah it’s one of those words with two Kun-Readings, otherwise the pun won’t work. But most importantly, where’s the fun in only guessing こく vs ごくwhen you could also guess こくvs ごく vs くに :v:

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Probably the most common case where rendaku applies is in the idea that good Japanese pronunciation is supposed to happen when you breathe out at a constant rate.

If you get sensitive to how much breath things take then it will give you a fairly good indication if rendaku applies.

Except that the difference between /k/ and /g/ has nothing to do with breathing…???
I mean, you have to breathe out in order to speak, but I think you can produce both sounds without changing the amount of air?

If you say ‘kay’ and ‘gee’ then no it doesn’t.

But か and が are the same w.r.t. mouth and tongue movement but the latter is voiced a little later than the former and so it requires less breath.

You have me curious now. I thought voiced sounds (like /g, z, b, v/) resulted from vocal fold vibration and if anything, would require more breath to set up the pressure difference. I shall have to investigate further (eventually).

Rendaku, on the other hand, remains a mystery to me. :joy:

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The answer is in this: Rendaku: Why Hito-Bito isn't Hito-Hito

More or less

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