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How to read kunyomi

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bkoger
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Posts: 3
Joined: July 30th, 2009 9:09 pm

How to read kunyomi

Postby bkoger » August 30th, 2010 4:43 pm

In a dictionary program I understand the comma separated list of readings, but what does it mean when they have a period between them?

For example:

In aedict, the kunyomi for 無 is listed as な.い

iaai
Been Around a Bit
Posts: 41
Joined: January 21st, 2010 7:42 pm

Postby iaai » August 30th, 2010 5:24 pm

Some words when written in kanji also have hiragana written at the end, such as 新しい and 行く. The hiragana endings are known as 'okurigana'. They are the parts of the word that change when being conjugated into other forms. And in a kanji dictionary, the part of the word written in kanji is to the left of the period, and to the right of the period is the okurigana.
For example, when looking up the kanji character 無, you came accross an entry which said な.い, so when this word is written in kanji it will look like this: 無い .
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