22
votes
Is it 日本人 or にほんじん?
Both are correct. 日本人 is the word for 'Japanese (person)' written in kanji. にほんじん is exactly the same word but written in hiragana. Adults normally use the kanji version (日本人), but にほんじん appears in ...
- 307k
19
votes
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Why did の disappear from 山手, but in 御茶ノ水 it's in katakana?
According to Wikipedia, the correct name of “山手線” is “やまのてせん.” In the application form of business license submitted by The National Railway (then 日本国有鉄道) to the government before the start of ...
- 9,505
12
votes
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Long O — when is it OU and when OO?
Really, all I can say is 'it depends on the word'. Generally on'yomi (Chinese-derived) readings use おう, while kun'yomi (native Japanese) readings use おお, but there may be exceptions. A note: if う is a ...
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11
votes
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Translate German name "Markus" to Japanese
Both マルクス and マーカス are common transcriptions of the name Markus or Marcus.
Roughly speaking you can think of マルクス as a more German/Scandinavian-sounding transcription and マーカス as a more English-...
- 48k
11
votes
Is it 日本人 or にほんじん?
The Japanese language uses 3 different writing systems:
kanji, which was originally borrowed from Chinese ideograms: they represent a “picture” of a word, related to the meaning of the word, but not ...
- 211
10
votes
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Why is もっと pronounced "motto" but written "motsuto"?
This is a double consonant sound. It's denoted by the smaller size つ. So instead of the word being pronounced as Mo-tsu-to, it is pronounced Mot-to because of the っ. That is why you have two t's ...
- 116
9
votes
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Is there an "I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!" example in Japanese?
There you go.
(Body must be at least 30 characters.)
- 65.3k
9
votes
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有り難う vs 有難う — Is this the same word?
Both are different spellings of ありがとう, neither is more formal, although all three spellings may be differentiated by frequency (see below).
ありがとう "thank you" may be derived from ありがたい through sound ...
- 48k
9
votes
我艦隊於黄海清艦撃沈之圖 how do you say this in Japanese?
If you look at the real scale image of 我艦隊於黄海清艦撃沈之圖, you can see a few small okurigana attached to kanji.
Although it does not conform today's standard orthography, it makes the name unambiguously ...
- 50.7k
9
votes
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Is おにょみ a valid spelling/pronunciation of 音読み?
おにょみ does not make sense except as deliberate 変換ミス (e.g. for comical effect).
Handling such mistypes is a common IME feature for words with ん+ vowel combinations or ん+な行.
As shown in the screenshot, ...
- 6,573
9
votes
Why is ゴミ箱 written in katakana usually?
According to the web (e.g. this), using katakana is a way of clarifying word borders. That is, ゴミ was used for ease of reading.
The linked column and some other web pages mention that ゴミ looks more ...
- 32.6k
9
votes
When to use ンネ vs ッネ?
The character っ (the small つ) represents a blocking of the airflow that lasts for more or less the duration of one mora (or one beat) before a plosive or an affricate, or a prolonged hissing in a ...
- 19.5k
8
votes
Long O — when is it OU and when OO?
As @Nothing at all notes, this depends on the word.
On'yomi always use -OU for long O sound and kun'yomi almost always -OO.1
However, the real problem here is that you are being asked to reconstruct ...
- 48k
8
votes
Etymology of ゴミ
Let me attempt to give an English explanation of @macraf 's description for you.
This word gomi was used mainly by farmers and meant 木の葉 ("[fallen] tree leaves"), and gomi is still used in various ...
- 1,883
7
votes
Why is もっと pronounced "motto" but written "motsuto"?
That character is not exactly the tsu-character!
The second character of もっと is called sokuon, it's not the normal hiragana 'つ'. The difference is that the sokuon is smaller (other than that, they are ...
- 1,503
7
votes
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What is the difference between 有る【ある】 and ある？
I believe here we have to think of the fact that ある is not necessarily 有る in kanji, but could be 在る and 或る as well (we can forget about the last one here). More on the differences here.
The first one ...
- 7,886
7
votes
Translate German name "Markus" to Japanese
This gets a bit pedantic on the terminology -- sorry for that. I just want to make sure we're clear on what we're talking about. :)
The conversion of Markus to マルクス is technically called ...
- 36.9k
7
votes
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Why does 全員 sound like zein but is written zenin (ぜんいん)?
That intermediate ん is still there. Really. When pronounced between two vowels, ん often causes nasality, without the speaker fully closing the airway -- so it doesn't sound like an English //n// or /...
- 36.9k
6
votes
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Is there a difference between ご飯 and 御飯?
I will break down your question:
What is the difference between ご飯 and 御飯 ?
The difference is purely orthographic. You will see this 御 (pronounced お or ご) used to make a word more "polite". The ...
- 2,736
6
votes
有り難う vs 有難う — Is this the same word?
Yes, they're both the same.
It's just an alternate spelling, think color vs. colour.
Not to my knowledge.
- 779
6
votes
Ocha in Hiragana
Certain sounds in Japanese are spelled using two kana, kind of like various two-letter compounds used in English that are used to spell a single sound -- technically called "digraphs", things like "th"...
- 36.9k
6
votes
Are they the same: コショウ vs コショー
胡椒, こしょう, コショウ and コショー refer to the same thing, and they are pronounced the same. The "standard" or "textbook" spelling is 胡椒 or こしょう, but コショウ and コショー are also widely used in the field of cooking.
...
- 307k
6
votes
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Why the specific spelling "一つひとつ"?
This is a matter of personal taste. If the author did this intentionally, I believe they were trying to emphasize the nuance of ひとつひとつ by covering various possible spellings. Similar examples include ...
- 307k
6
votes
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Why "ついてきてください" and not "付いてきてください"
There are many instances where this happens in Japanese. For whatever reason, sometimes the Kanji is not used with a word.
Here's a few examples:
ありがとう (normal) 有り難う (kanji form)
よろしくおねがいします (normal)...
- 7,089
6
votes
我艦隊於黄海清艦撃沈之圖 how do you say this in Japanese?
我艦隊於黄海清艦撃沈之圖 seems to be in kanbun-style, i.e., it's written following the Chinese grammar. The grammar of kanbun is closer to that of English because Chinese is an SVO (subject-verb-object) language. ...
- 307k
6
votes
Why is ゴミ箱 written in katakana usually?
The word ゴミ is indeed quite likely to be written in katakana. Come to think of it, though I don't have quantitative data, this word does have a short word form, high-frequency use, and no stable kanji ...
- 50.7k
5
votes
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How to write long sound to emphasize words?
Yes, writing it as しいいいらない is okay, but is relatively uncommon. More common ways to write this are:
しーらない！
しーーーらない！
し～らない！
し～～～らない！
しいぃぃらない！ (with small ぃ)
Needless to say, don't use these in ...
- 307k
5
votes
What’s the correct Hiragana/Kanji for ‘nokuseni’
The word is ‘kuse ni’ (くせに), in this usage almost exclusively written in hiragana.
Not to be confused with 癖 (kuse) (a habit; a particular personal trait).
The definition is ‘despite or ‘in spite ...
- 7,170
5
votes
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The ''is it included in the kanji or not'' phenomenon?
This is a very interesting question. There are certain "classes" of words where I don't think native speakers would have this problem at all. I doubt anyone would read 父 as just 「と」, or 大 ...
- 43.9k
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