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For example:

  • 一日{いちにち} = one day (duration);
  • 一日{ついたち} = first day of the month.

First of all, are the meanings correct? Because I found contradicting answers.
I suspect the meanings are overlapping in some cases?

Then, after a quick search, I found out that okurigana is efficient to disambiguate them. Didn't the author mean furigana instead? Maybe I didn't grasp something here.

Lastly, what are the most important (to know)/most frequent homographic Kanji out there?

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  • I didn't find a tag with "homographic-kanji", I'll create a tag wiki for that.
    – Alenanno
    Oct 11, 2011 at 10:02
  • "duration" would be 一日中
    – Axioplase
    Oct 11, 2011 at 10:14
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    Actually 一日中 means throughout the day, and 一日 can be used as a durational count.
    – Flaw ♦
    Oct 11, 2011 at 10:32
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    Can someone please explain the close vote? It's not helpful to vote to close a question that actually shows a real problem, especially without giving an explanation for that close vote. In this case then, about close-vote reason that was "NARQ", I'd like to ask who voted: please, stand up and explain why my question would be "ambiguous, vague, incomplete, or rhetorical" and why it can't be "reasonably answered in its current form." Thank you
    – Alenanno
    Oct 12, 2011 at 15:48
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    @Alenanno: I voted NARQ. You'll notice I tried to answer (even before voting). Trying to answer convinced me the question, as is, wasn't proper. And it's also one single vote; you don't have to take that badly. As far as I know, the question is still open, as the community decided…
    – Axioplase
    Oct 13, 2011 at 5:27

1 Answer 1

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First of all, are the meanings correct?

Yes, you are right.

Then, after a quick search, I found out that okurigana is efficient to disambiguate them. Didn't the author mean furigana instead?

Yes, he's wrong.

Lastly, what are the most important (to know)/most frequent homographic Kanji out there?

Err, all the X中, where 中 is read ちゅう or じゅう.
And also

今日 -- こんにち(today, nowadays, or in "こんにちは")/きょう(today),
明日 -- あす/あした/みょうにち、
昨日 -- さくじつ/きのう
今年 -- こんねん/ことし…

Basically, the "on.yomi" is more formal than the other readings.

I have no idea how to rank anything (which I can't even remember) by importance… I'd like to say that there aren't that many, and that answering would be vain, barely a useful information (if you ignore proper nouns…)

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3
  • Your answer is good enough, but about the examples... I was not really requiring a "rank" type of list... Just a small list, or some examples, about some expressions that have the same issues. Something on the lines of "These are the most known exceptions" for grammar. :) And 今日 is also read こんにち? I thought it only was きょう...
    – Alenanno
    Oct 13, 2011 at 10:18
  • Yes, "こんにち" means "nowadays".
    – Axioplase
    Oct 13, 2011 at 10:39
  • Great! So きょう means "today" and こんにち means "nowadays"? If you organize that part of the answer to highlight these differences, it'd be wonderful! I was looking for something like that. :)
    – Alenanno
    Oct 13, 2011 at 10:43

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