Jisho question + 1 more

Hello,

When I look things up on Jisho, sometimes I see stuff like for example た.すin the list of readings for 足. I don’t understand what the . in between hiragana represents, can anyone clarify?

Also, sometimes I watch youtube vids in Japanese with subtitles. This morning at the end of one subtitle was a pair of (), inside of which was what looked like a giant upside-down capital letter A. I’ve seen this now in a few places.

I googled (well, duckduckwent) madly, and all I got was:

  1. Translations, how to say “upside-down letter A” in Japanese
  2. Cheesy website links offering to generate upside-down letters

This was amusing but unhelpful. Can someone enlighten me?

Thanks!

I believe it’s just to show that the Kun’yomi reading they’re showing is before the period - when the Kun’yomi is part of a verb, what comes after the period isn’t actually part of the Kun’yomi reading, but is just the okurigana showing the end of the verb

(Kun’yomi verb reading⠀). (⠀verb ending)

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“た.す” means that 足す is pronounced たす. Each kanji has different pronounciations, depending on context. Words can be made up of a single kanji, several kanji together, or kanji and hiragana/katakana. If you see a reading with a dot that means anything before the dot is the reading of the kanji, if it’s written with the hiragana after the dot.
eg:
行: い.く means that 行くis pronounced いく
遊: あそ.ぶ means that 遊ぶ is pronounced あそぶ

(someone correct me if I’m wrong)

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hehe, duckduckwent. nice one

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