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Question! How. In. The. Actual. Eff. Do you know which on’yomi/kun’yomi to use?
For example. Why is the 人 in アメリカ人 pronounced じん instead of にん? and when would you just use ひと?
Once you’ve learnt lots of vocab, you start to get a feel for which reading to use where.
In the case of 人, it’s usually じん when it’s noun+人, にん when it’s number+人, and ひと when it’s standing around on its own.
So, say, ドイツ人は十一人の人です (“There are eleven Germans”) is どいつじんはじゅういちにんのひとです.
Of course, there’s always exceptions – most notable of which is that 一人 and 二人 are pronounced ひとり and ふたり just to make things entertaining.
Think about it like this:
Move, dove, grove. Same -ove ending, totally different pronunciation.
English has weird pronunciations that honestly can only be learned by using the language and making a bunch of mistakes. Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8jw_-Vh9Z0
I haz a blog http://maninjapanchannel.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLQzB-1u-dgHaha Justin, that was ridiculous.
Alright though, thanks guys. That helps. I suppose just persevere and I’ll get the hang of it!
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