Forum Rocket Japanese Japanese Vocab What's the difference between hito and jin?

What's the difference between hito and jin?

kitty-cupcake

kitty-cupcake

hello! I was just a little confused at this going over the different lessons. thank you!
2679

2679

Hito and Jin are both readings of the kanji 人 = person. While Hito is the Kun (Japanese) reading, Jin is the On (Chinese) reading of that character. When used as an independent word to mean person/man, it is read as Hito. When 人 is part of a word made out of more than one character, it is usually read as Jin or Nin. Here are some examples: * Kono hito wa dare desu ka ? = Who is this person ? (here, it is read as hito because it is an independent word) * example of words in which it is read as Jin/Nin: - 人間 - ningen = human - 人生 - jinsei = life - 人類 - jinrui = humanity - 人口 - jinkou = population When it comes to counting people, the reading Nin is used always. You just add Nin to a number to count people. There are 2 exceptions here though: *1 person -> 一人 (hitori) *2 persons -> 二人 (futari) The rest are read as: sanNIN (3 persons), yoNIN (4 persons), goNIN (5 persons) etc. Hope this clarifies things a bit :)
kitty-cupcake

kitty-cupcake

Yes it totally does!! Ahhh thank you sooooo mcuh! ^w^
2679

2679

Also forgot to mention that there also are exceptions here, but fortunately they're not many. When I say exceptions, I mean that 人 is part of a word, but is still read as hito (99% of the cases read as "bito"). There are only 2 that come to mind now: "hitobito" (人々 = people/populus -> where the 々 takes the place of the second character in duplicates). The other one is: "tabibito" (旅人 = traveler)
kitty-cupcake

kitty-cupcake

thank you again! :)

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