# Do the Japanese make spelling mistakes?



## KaleNovice

Now that I'm trying to memorize Japanese vocabulary, I always confuse between ki & gi, tou & to, tou & dou , and so on. For example, whether it should be (大使館) たいしかんor だいしかん, (指導) しどう or しとう, (金庫) きんこ or きんこう....

Now i start wondering if Japanese people manage to spell all these words correctly? Or they sometimes make mistakes too? I'm just curious...


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## DaylightDelight

For us, voiced and unvoiced consonants such as /t/ and /d/, /k/ and /g/ are easily distinguishable and very few people confuse them (except for small children, maybe).

But we do make other kind of mistakes.  For example, there is a Japanese word ふんいき (atmosphere).  Not a small number of people mistake it as ふいんき.  There are even computer applications that automatically correct them .


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## 810senior

I suppose that we would more often mistake it in writing some kanji-origin words.

For instance, 以外 could be easily written and mistaken in the sense of 意外 at times, whether it is by purpose or unawares.

意外igai unexpected(ly)
以外igai except for


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## SoLaTiDoberman

KaleNovice said:


> (大使館) たいしかんor だいしかん, (指導) しどう or しとう, (金庫) きんこ or きんこう....


We, Japanese, don't confuse them. They are very popular words.

However, in case of family names or the proper names of places or people, we sometimes confuse them because they can be read differently.
For example,
新垣　にいがき＆あらがき
高木　たかき＆たかぎ
三ケ島　みかじま＆みかしま
田原　たはら＆たわら＆たばる
とみた　冨田＆富田
かわの　河野＆川野
河野　かわの＆こうの
中田　なかだ＆なかた
etc
Multiple pronunciations are possible, but one person/family has only one correct spelling or pronunciation depending to each person/family.

We cannot know how to read them in advance. We have to remember how to pronounce them or how to spell them according to each family/place.
Therefore, native Japanese people also have to learn them one by one.


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## KaleNovice

Thank you for the information. Since I personally have trouble memorizing Japanese vocab accurately, I thought Japanese people may sometimes have trouble in this aspect too... Like the word 大 is usually pronounced as "dai" , but not in the case of "大使館", causing me a lot of confusion and difficulty in memorization.


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## ktdd

KaleNovice said:


> the word 大 is usually pronounced as "dai" , but not in the case of "大使館"


大した is also 'tai'. 大使館なんて、大したものじゃないんだ。


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## DaylightDelight

In my opinion those same spelling/different pronunciation issues are not so different from English spelling/pronunciation differences: tough, though and through for example.
You simply have to memorise them, I guess.


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## 810senior

KaleNovice said:


> Thank you for the information. Since I personally have trouble memorizing Japanese vocab accurately, I thought Japanese people may sometimes have trouble in this aspect too... Like the word 大 is usually pronounced as "dai" , but not in the case of "大使館", causing me a lot of confusion and difficulty in memorization.


Here's a repetitive reminder that 大 can be pronounced as both _dai _and _tai_, as far as I remember there's no such rule on them determined already.
You just have to memorize which word that includes 大 is pronounced like this and that as likely as you remember how _gh _is pronounced in English, f sound or else the silenced, as in tough, cough, though etc.


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## frequency

Kale, you're in a much more successful position because you're Chinese. lol

You asked if we make spelling mistakes. Yes, you can add "conversion mistakes", too. Note that we have two _Daiben_, so be careful.


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## frequency

ktdd said:


> 大した is also 'tai'. 大使館なんて、大したものじゃないんだ。


ktdd,

You know, 大使 is _Taishi_ and 大師 is _Daishi_.
Do you have such an inconsistency in Chinese hanji reading?


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## ktdd

frequency said:


> Do you have such an inconsistency in Chinese hanji reading?


Sure. 行 is _xíng_ in 行動, 流行 etc. but _háng_ in 銀行, 行列. There's a running joke of someone misreading 中国人民银行(_yínháng_, bank) as 中国人民很行(_hěn xíng_, very capable).


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## frequency

Thank you, ktdd. What do you do when you come across hanji you don't know how to read?


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## ktdd

frequency said:


> What do you do when you come across hanji you don't know how to read?


In most cases you can figure out its meaning from the context and just ignore it (of course if you work in a field related to letters/literature, it's another matter). For most people, the only time they have to know how to pronounce a rare character is when it appears in personal names or place names but then you can always ask (the person who uses rare/difficult characters in their name may even feel compelled to tell everybody how to pronounce it). An average educated person knows about 3000-5000 characters. I recently read that "2,840 characters cover 99% of all occurrences in a representative Modern Chinese corpus consisting of 193,504,018 total characters. 6,485 characters cover 99.99% of all occurrences in the same corpus." So it's not that often. No big deal.


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## frequency

ktdd said:


> In most cases you can figure out its meaning from the context and just ignore it. For most people, the only time they have to know how to pronounce a rare character is when it appears in personal names or place names but then you can always ask (the person who uses rare/difficult characters in their name may even feel compelled to tell everybody how to pronounce it).


We're exactly the same. ..And at least I've found out that Kale needs to have a good memory. lol  Thanks a lot.


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## KaleNovice

frequency said:


> We're exactly the same. ..And at least I've found out that Kale needs to have a good memory. lol  Thanks a lot.


Yeah you are right, I guess there's no shortcut to memorizing vocab ...


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