How to pronounce 回答数 -「かいとうすう」or 「かいとうかず」?

Japanese Language
1

I was doing my vocab lessons today and saw these examples on the context tab for 回答:

image

I wasn’t sure how to pronounce these first two
(回答数 and 回答中), because there isn’t a dictionary entry for them, at least on jisho.org, which means in both cases it’s two separate words, right? As in:
回答 + 数
回答 + 中

So I would expect the readings to be
かいとう かず
かいとう なか

However, since I’m not able to confirm the pronunciation on jisho, I sometimes use Google Translate and it’s saying the readings are:
かいどう すう
かいどう ちゅう

I know Google Translate probably makes thousands of mistakes especially when translating from Japanese to western languages, is this one of those cases or is the reading for these characters really on’yomi?

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I’m hard guessing the first is かいとうすう, since that seems more consistent with how I’ve seen it used in conjunctions like these. So I’ll leave that to someone more confident in answering it.

But 中 as in, being in the middle of doing something, is generally always ちゅう.
Example, if you’re in the middle of studying, you’re 勉強中. べんきょうちゅう

Context examples like these are why I’d really wish they’d have furigana, or at least a phonetic hover option, early on. Because sometimes it really isn’t that obvious unless you have way more familiarity with words and characters than you could reasonable have so soon after learning them.

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Isn’t it
かいとうすう
かいとうちゅう
?
Notice the rendaku.

The kunyomi readings for 数 and 中 would be used if these are separate from the 回答 core. There are exceptions to general rules like this, though.

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It means they’re suffixes. Jisho lists them both as suffixes, using the on’yomi.

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yes, you’re right! i think i made a mistake cause it’s vocab i just learned :sweat_smile:

ooohhh! makes sense, thanks a bunch!

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