In my reviews, I constantly happen to find that when guessing the correct reading of 物, apart from kun’yomi or on’yomi, ぶつ is often the reading when it concerns living things, whereas もの is used with inanimate objects. Is this just coincidence or is there some logic/etymology behind this?

I looked around in the dictionary a bit and I can’t say I see that connection. 農産物見物名物実物化合物 are all inanimate things with the ぶつ reading. keep in mind that ぶつ is the onyomi while もの is the kunyomi and at some point you will get a feel for where it doesn’t make sense to have a kunyomi readi…

And then sometimes they just smash もの and ぶつ together and get もつ, like some sort of undead Frankenstein’s monster hiding in your 荷物

[image] Darcinon: And then sometimes they just smash もの and ぶつ together and get もつ, like some sort of undead Frankenstein’s monster hiding in your 荷物 Just to be clear, both ぶつ and もつ are onyomi, but ぶつ is the Kanon onyomi and もつ is the Goon onyomi.

[image] Leebo: もつ is the Goon onyomi. I know this is go-on, but I quite like the idea that Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe have invented their own system for how to read kanji. :slightly_smiling_face:

the pattern you should look out for is that kun-readings and on-readings tend to stick together… of course the exceptions… but as a rule of thumb kun then on, roughly the same meaning 食べ物 tabemono 食物 shokumotsu food 生き物 ikimono 生物 seibutsu living thing 腹切 harakiri 切腹 seppuku cut up your be…

もの is one of my favourite Japanese words :slight_smile:

魔物 is another one. It’s semi common, I would say, if you watch enough anime. But I won’t be able to come up with a third one, I think.

can you tell us about the difference between these two types of onyomi? I’ve never heard the terms embarassingly enough.

Basically refers to when the reading was introduced into Japanese. Go-on = 5th-6h centuries, Kan-on = 7th-9th centuries, To-on = 10th century onwards, while kan’yo-on is readings that were changed after they arrived in Japan. Kan-on is most common. Go-on readings tend to feature in Buddhist termino…

Possible rule of thumb for 物?

Japanese Language Kanji

Leebo September 19, 2018, 11:27pm 7

The only exception I can think of off the top of my head (for 物) is a word so common that I doubt anyone would have trouble remembering it.

本物

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Possible rule of thumb for 物?

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