I’ve been going a little deep into a couple different Japanese resources, including things like jisho.org (which get’s its data from JMDict).
Which leads me to an example question that I have and how much faith I should put into these resources.
There are two different spellings for 真中 and 真ん中. The second is clearly まんなか the former… well google translate says its also まんなか, and I have a couple other resources that agree, but Jisho/JMDict say it is まなか, which would logically follow from the kanji readings.
So… is まなか a valid reading of 真中, or is it a special reading where it should be read まんなか despite not having an explicit ん and まん not being a typical reading of 真?
I know… a somewhat silly question in the grand scheme of things.
Really at the heart of it is: what resources can I trust. I had hoped that JMDict was a reliable dictionary.
Of course! Also, from just googling the terms 真中 spit out a bunch of Chinese results and 真ん中 gave me a bunch of Japanese ones… I think 真ん中 might be the preferred usage
Daijisen agrees with JMDict in listing only まなか for 真中; GG5, Progressive and Meikyou don’t have an entry for 真中 at all, only 真ん中. The only source I found that gives まんなか as a reading for 真中 is 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (which lists it after まんなか and also lists みなか, so I suspect this dictionary might have a lot of historical/obsolete/rare readings).
The conclusion I would draw from this is:
真ん中 is most common and also not susceptible to misreadings, so if writing, use that
if you read 真中 as まなか, that’s at least not wrong and is the most commonly cited reading
I don’t think you’re wrong in this instance, but that’s always a little tricky when it comes to pure kanji search terms, mostly from the sheer size of the Chinese internet.
That’s a hit for the word as a name, though – the author of that cookbook is 真中 陽宙(まなか あきお). Name readings can be all over the place compared to readings for actual words.
