4 ms·

Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png https://i.imgur.

Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimately you just have to learn common words and for ones where there are multiple common pronunciations (like these names), someone will ask for the pronunciation (for names) or it will be clear from context (for words). Also, if you weren't aware, there's also a thing called furigana, which is essentially writing the alphabet really small above a kanji word so you know the pronunciation. Really useful and something that Chinese sorely lacks imo.

bigger_cheese 8y ago
>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
  - bigger_cheese 8y ago
    Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.
- rococode 8y ago
  Oh yeah definitely! I never noticed the similarity with -son, that's really interesting. I was actually specifically referring to the "Aki" part of Akiko which isn't listed in the dictionary I'm using. Now that I think about it though, I've never seen that read as Akiko before (or Akiko written that way). I don't see it on any websites and Microsoft IME doesn't list that as a version of Akiko at all (~10 pages of suggestions). Makes me curious about where the author got that reading from...
  - fenomas 8y ago
    It doesn't mean much for a particular kanji/reading to not appear in your IME - there are just too many combinations, and sometimes a given reading will only be common in certain areas or even families. Plus people sometimes just make up new ones :) With that said, here's a site showing the "akiko" reading: https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%AD%90 https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%A... (Searching by reading, the same site lists 291 different ways to write "akiko". Yipes.)

bigger_cheese 8y ago

>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago
  Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.
rococode 8y ago
Oh yeah definitely! I never noticed the similarity with -son, that's really interesting. I was actually specifically referring to the "Aki" part of Akiko which isn't listed in the dictionary I'm using. Now that I think about it though, I've never seen that read as Akiko before (or Akiko written that way). I don't see it on any websites and Microsoft IME doesn't list that as a version of Akiko at all (~10 pages of suggestions). Makes me curious about where the author got that reading from...
- fenomas 8y ago
  It doesn't mean much for a particular kanji/reading to not appear in your IME - there are just too many combinations, and sometimes a given reading will only be common in certain areas or even families. Plus people sometimes just make up new ones :) With that said, here's a site showing the "akiko" reading: https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%AD%90 https://name.sijisuru.com/Pname/pdetail?pname=%E6%B7%B3%E5%A... (Searching by reading, the same site lists 291 different ways to write "akiko". Yipes.)