I am having the hardest time differentiating the pronunciations of 大 in different vocabulary words. Sometimes it is だい and sometimes it is たい. I usually always pick the wrong one! Sometimes it is おお. I usuly only have trouble with the others, though. I have tried to see a pattern, but I can’t.
I looked up in the boards and couldn’t find a topic on it. Are there any good pointers to remembering when to use たい and when to use だい?
I’m glad you posted this and hope someone responds, because I have been wondering the same thing!
That and Sun/Day with じつ/にち/ひ
I find it is pretty much a role of the die whether a new vocab uses たい or だい. Except when you have a bit more feeling for the language, you can kind of predict it, since it just feels better one way, vs the other
Oooh wait until you unlock 大人, please don’t be near any sharp objects in that time
I’ve been there. I’m still there. As far as I can tell there is no true pattern. I just had to wrestle with them. I think it just takes time to get used to them as they are.
It’s weird to be honest. I can’t tell you the rule on how i know them, but 9 times out of 10 i can predict which reading to use for 大。That is because you will learn so many words that use that kanji, and the human brain is an expert of picking up on patterns subconsciously.
I don’t know much but what I do know is that most (I won’t say all because that’s asking for an exception) vocabs having to do with education are だい. Ex. University, Private College, Grad School.
Now whenever I come across 大 = だい I try to set the mnemonic in a school to help remember.
For this, there exists a rule:
じつ or にち?
That is because they’re all 大学
I don’t really know of a rule, but you’ll get better at guessing over time. Eventually you’ll get to a point where one will just sound right. That doesn’t mean you’ll guess right every time of course, but with enough practice and exposure you can certainly get to a point where you’re right 90+% of the time.
Make separate mnemonics for each reading and remember them in relation to the vocab words in question
As far as I know this depends on reading of following kanji/horagana. If " reading follow like “gaku” 学 than " reading is used だいがく。And if not than not. So たいした。Both ta and shi are without " mark.
I believe term sound and unsound are used for that but english is not my native so I could be wrong.
I’d be interested to see if it holds true generally, but off the top of my head some exceptions would be 大工 (だいく, not だいぐ) and 大胆 (だいたん, not だいだん) and 大概 (たいがい, not だいがい) and 大木 (たいぼく, not だいぼく). And then even things like 大分 (だいぶ) and 大部 (たいぶ) have both ways for similar second-half readings.
Exceptions are inevitable, but I wonder what the percentages are.
The pattern I’m getting so far is that if it’s attached to another kanji it would be たい or だい, but I still can’t predict whether it’d be any of both. If it’s attached to okurigana then it’s usually おお.
As for 日, when it means something like a name of a day whether it is day of the week of independence day and such, it’s usually ひ or び (mostly it’ll be び, it’ll get rendaku-ed when two words form a compound, but there isn’t really a formula for this too). When the context is somewhat a counter for day or dates, it’s usually にち. And the rest would be じつ. It’s hard for me to explain じつ、but I’m starting to feel which one of these sounds more natural.
Of course these are all just my best guesses. (^_^;)
I think it’s more so that if attaches to something that uses kunyomi, it’ll probably also be kunyomi. So, like 幅 is usually read with kunyomi, はば, so 大幅 is おおはば, and not たいふく or something.
空 alone is usually そら, not くう, so 大空 is おおぞら (though dealing with the rendaku is another issue).
If something has okurigana, that’s a visual indicator of kunyomi, but even without it you can see kunyomi.
Ah, I forgot 大空! Maybe it’s just a matter of Japanese or Chinese origin words?
Well yeah, that would be another way of framing the onyomi, kunyomi distinction.
This does not apply only to 大, but my approach when I learn a word is to associate its meaning with the sounds of the pronunciation, not the kanji themselves, and it works great. I know the word だいじ means “important”, I know the word たいかい means “tournament”. When I hear them I recognize them like that. When I see the kanji, I use that as a shortcut to get to the word that’s already memorized as kana in my head. So if I see 大会, I try the different readings in my head first and see if I find a match. I don’t recognize だいかい so I try たいかい. It matches the word I know, so I’ll pick that reading.
In my experience, that’s the easiest way not to mess up the different readings.Instead of seeing the characters and trying to guess the readings, I memorize the word in kana and use the kanji as a tool to get to the kana that I already know. Not sure how much that helps you, but I hope it does.
After learning a lot of kanji, you kind of get a feeling for what readings are the most common, and can guess the reading of a new kanji word you haven’t learned before, but that will take a lot of learning until your brain learns to recognize these patterns.
Good idea. One specific to remembering the pronunciation.