Hi there, In the Reading Explanation section for the vocab reading of 入り口 it says “Because there’s some okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) attached, you can bet that 入り will be a kun’yomi reading.” while in the 女 Reading Explanation section it says “When a word is a single kanji with no okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) it tends to use a kun’yomi reading.” am I just misreading this?
Both explanations are correct. A single kanji alone is likely to be kun-yomi and anytime hiragana is attached to a kanji it is likely to be kun’yomi, because these are Japanese created pronunciations.
On’yomi is most often used for borrowed words from Chinese, like: じんこう・人口
Compound kanji with no hiragana usually use on’yomi.
入り口 is probably a mix of 入る and 口. To enter mouth becomes entrance.
Edit: I went and read the reading sections of these two words myself, Yes, they are misleading.
From 入り口:
Because there’s some okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) attached, you can bet that 入り will be a kun’yomi reading.
Yes. Becuase kanji are not words. Kanji represent words. 口 represents “くち” the word mouth. 入る represents “はいる” the word for “enter”. 入り口 represents “いりぐち” the word for entrance. You can bet that if hiragana is attached to kanji to make a word it is kun’yomi. Because kun’yomi is the japanese pronunciation and hiragana only exists in Japanese.
From 女:
When a word is a single kanji with no okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) it tends to use a kun’yomi reading.
Yes. When one kanji is representing a word, that word tends to be a Japanese pronunciation. “おんな” in this case.
When two kanji represent a word "彼女” that word tends to be a Chinese pronunciation. “かのじょ” in this case. This means “she/her”.
Thank you Oryantge, that makes a whole lot of sense to me now.
Yeah, I think what’s mostly confusing is that the description for 女 doesn’t make it clear what it’s contrasting against. Basically, words with okurigana always use kun’yomi, without fail, while single stand-alone kanji are probably kun’yomi, but might be on’yomi.
There are some on’yomi verbs, like 応じる、決して、察する…
Does the じる in 信じる not count as okurigana? I know that it’s related to する, but I’m still not sure if it technically counts.
Some kanji only have onyomi. This is one of those cases.
Heh. Is there an echo in here?
I’ma say they don’t count 'cause they’re する verbs, and that lets me keep my lovely shining exception to the “all rules have exceptions” rule.
But they don’t conjugate like suru?
Etymology!
Thank you everyone for coming in and making it confusing… I was trying to give him the intro and let him figure out that it’s way more complicated later… when he’s in too deep to turn back. LOL
The dictionary I looked up 信じる in says it’s from 信ずる, and that entry says it’s affected by something called サ変 (サ行変格活用). I don’t really have a good understanding of that, but it still seems related to する based on the little bit I do understand.
A more confusing thing can be that okurigana is often dropped resulting in 入口, which is still read いりぐち
That kind of thing is common for words that appear in signs to save space. Like in the U.S. I’ve seen signs that say “Ped Xing”, which is a lot shorter than “Pedestrian Crossing”.
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