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Hi,
Sorry if this is a dumb question and has appeared before, I did try a search but couldn’t find anything on it. Also please excuse if I use any of the terminology wrong, I am very new to Japanese!
My question is related to the seven people kanji 七人 that first appears in the でした sentence pack (4).
Why is it pronounced しちにん instead of ななり. This would follow the same pattern as the previously introduced 二人（ふたり）and 一人（ひとり), as well as 七つ （ななつ）pronunciations. I feel like I missed a step somewhere because this one threw me. I could understand if it was the difference between one “person” and two “people” but one and two have the same pronunciation.
Thank you in advance for any help.
P.S. Hello :) this is my first post on here.
Welcome!
The thing that Koichi fails to mention is that 一人 and 二人 are the exception, not the pattern. Hoping he adds a mention someday, because it confuses many people. From three and up, it’s mostly on’yomi+にん.
三人 = さんにん
四人 = よにん (kun’yomi is used because しにん sounds like 死人 which means “corpse”)
五人 = ごにん
六人 = ろくにん
七人 = しちにん
八人 = はちにん
九人 = きゅうにん
十人 = じゅうにん
十一人 = じゅういちにん
百人 = ひゃくにん
千人 = せんにん
and so forthThat said, in the case of 七人, the reading ななにん is not unheard-of (not extremely common, but not unheard-of either) because 七 is a weird one in that its readings tend to be fairly interchangeable.
Hi Joel,
Thank you very much for your response, this has definitely helped clear this up for me! Hopefully it will get fixed someday because it is confusing and felt like a real curve ball when it appeared.
Thanks :)
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