| Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary |
If someone said, Konomi wa konomi desu, would you know what they meant? Maybe it would help to see the kanji and kana:
好みは木の実です。
Konomi wa konomi desu.
Or perhaps things remain unclear. If so, a translation should help:
My preference is nuts.
If you still feel a little confused, thrown off, discombobulated, or miffed without quite knowing why, it’s probably because the yomi didn’t shake out as you expected. The kanji here have atypical yomi, compared with what one usually sees for these characters. Here’s the breakdown:
好み (konomi: preference)
This kanji often appears as 好き (suki: liking, taste, choice).
木の実 (konomi or kinomi: nuts, fruits, berries) tree + fruit
You may have been tempted to read 木 and 実 as complete words with the yomi of ki and jitsu, respectively. But in this case, you need to take 木の実 as a unit. There are two possible yomi here: konomi and kinomi. The latter is actually more common, but only the konomi yomi allowed for the wordplay above! I also like konomi because it’s a permutation of kimono!
Whether one reads 木の実 as konomi or kinomi, 実 has the yomi of mi in this word. With that yomi, 実 means “fruit.” (As we saw last week, 実 can also have the yomi of sane, which means the seed or pit inside fruit.) Take, for instance, this term:
実がなる (mi ga naru: to bear fruit; produce a crop)
The meaning is simple and clear. As なる (naru) means “to become,” this construction means “to become fruit” or “to become a crop.”
I should say that if you send 実 out into the world on its own with the yomi of mi, it won’t necessarily conjure up images of peaches or grapes for native speakers. To accomplish that, you’ll need the following word:
果物 (kudamono: fruit) fruit + thing
This word allows you to say, Kudamono o kudasai. (Fruit, please.) This colloquial term is the one you would use in a grocery store, because 果物 refers to picked fruit.
果実 (kajitsu: fruit) fruit + fruit
Don’t use this one in a market. But do use it if you’re talking about fruit growing on trees, the crop yield of a fruit farm, the relative acidity of pineapples and lemons, and the berries that birds eat.
You’ll notice that 果 takes first position in each word, so you might wonder what this kanji has to offer in a fruity discussion. In fact, this character bears striking similarities to 実, in that both can refer to edible or inedible fruit.
We’ve seen the edible sort of fruit thus far in this discussion. With terms such as 果物, 果実, and 木の実, we’re talking about yummy-in-the-tummy kind of fruit.
But then there’s the matter of “inedible” fruit, by which I don’t mean poisonous berries or anything like that! Rather, I’m talking about the “fruits” of one’s labor. Both 実 and 果 can give off the sense of a reward for hard work. More on that next week. Now it’s time for your reward—a Verbal Logic Quiz!
