"Every Month" kanji description error

#1

On the description page it says:

“The most common reading for this word has the on’yomi reading for 毎 plus the kun’yomi reading for 月. That makes it まいつき. But it can be read まいげつ using both on’yomi readings too. You can use either!”

But it doesn’t accept まいがつ as a valid reading, so either it does accept “both on’yomi readings” or it doesn’t.

Also why is there change from がつ to げつ in 毎月 but no change from にち to じつ in 毎日? I was under the impression the change to second form happens when we treat both Kanji as a single word, like “monthly” instead of “every month”.

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#2

Both “onyomis” as in both kanji use their onyomi. 毎 and 月

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#3

There isn’t a “change”. がつ and げつ are both on’yomi for 月, and one just happens to be a valid reading for the 月 in 毎月 while the other isn’t. Either way, I’d pretend the まいげつ reading doesn’t exist since まいつき is more common.

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#4

is it the same with 何日, 何月, 同日 and 来月? I got here trying to figure out a rule to when use 1st and second form between these.

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#5

I don’t know what you mean by first and second forms.

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#6

I mean when you write april as in 4th month you use がつ, but when you write words like last month you use げつ, I didn’t know how else to call it

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#7

To add on to @seanblue,
There’s no relation between reading patterns of 日 and 月, they’re entirely unrelated kanji.
The (general) pattern for 月 is if it’s attached to a number, or you’re asking a question in which the expected answer is a number, it’s read がつ (一月・いちがつ、八月・はちがつ、何月・なんがつ). If not, it’s read げつ (今月・こんげつ、来月・らいげつ).

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#8

Ok, that kinda solves it. But isn’t it similar with にち and じつ?

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#9

You write いちにち but せんじつ when there’s no number

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#10

がつ is used for specific months. げつ is used for relative / non-specific months.

This isn’t something that can be generalized to other kanji.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with the distinction in the vocab description though.

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#11

Ok, I though I found some pattern between 日 and 月, I guess it’s just a local coincidence

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#12

You say まいにち and not まいじつ. Just have to take each example on its own.

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#13

Not really. 日 has an entirely different set of rules, because it’s an entirely different kanji.

一日 in and of itself has a special rule in that it can be read either いちにち as in “one day” or ついたち as “first of a month”. It’s not worth trying to apply the same rules across multiple kanji. They’re just not the same.

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#14

A shame, rules like that make it easier to make sense out of it. Though we are speaking about languages where exceptions exist, my own Polish language is plenty guilty of overusing those :slight_smile:

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#15

I think that’s just the nature of languages. Just look at English spelling. :joy:

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#16

Well, current English is like ver. 7.0 and it merged with a lot of French and a bit of Dutch on the way :smiley:

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#17

If you wanna think about it that way, think of this as Japanese X.0 merged with Chinese at several different points along the way, but instead of updating pronunciations each time they just added new ones.

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#18

So back to the topic, please add the missing pronunciation for these wherever both are correct, or it just confuses people

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#19

What missing pronunciation are you referring to? There isn’t anything missing.

Regardless, if you think there’s an issue you’re more likely to get a response by e-mailing them at hello@wanikani.com

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#20

Well, I’m not sure about other languages but you can see the evolution of English throughout the ages mostly due to people still reading English texts created throughout the ages (Shakespeare plays, etc.) We don’t really have that in Polish, in a sense that, there are single words that fell out of use called archaisms, but overall It didn’t change as much when you read something written in Polish several hundred years ago.

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