Kin

[tisoi]

Interesting.

How would you pronounce 金武In my Okinawan book, a town named "Chin" is mentioned. The Japanese name is "Kin" and it gave the kanji, 金武

Comments

[takumashii]

I think it's very rare that 武 would be read as ん. Geographical names and personal names sometimes have very weird, unconventional readings for historical reasons--and I suspect that would be even more true of a place like Okinawa.

武 has a more frequent reading of む, and historically, what is now the sound ん used to be written as む in certain contexts... perhaps there's some relation to that?

[dunautremonde]

I'm not an expert, but wouldn't this be the case of 今日, where nothing really corresponds to the phonetic pronunciation, but just the meaning?

[loudasthesun]

yeah, i think 今日　is one of those.

from Wikipedia

Gikun (義訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi, but are instead connected by the meaning of the written and spoken phrases.For example, the compound 一寸 might naïvely be read issun, meaning "one sun", but it is more often used to write the indivisible word chotto, "a little". Gikun also feature in some Japanese family names.

[mexonxpedestal]

One of the kanji I remember from when I was little is for "gold" which is pronounced "kin"... and I recognize that first kanji to be gold.

[loudasthesun]

as a radical, jin/kin 金 means metal or things related to metal. by itself, it means gold.

[nakendlom]

金武 also means Kanatake. It is also name of location.
The kanji 武 has 2 on-readings. The first is ぶ - soldier, martial deal. The second is む, as takumashii said (see. 武者 (むしゃ) - warrior). But, this kanji also has several odd readings, that are used only in single words. For example, 武士(もののふ - samurai). Kun-reading of this kanji is たけ (brave).

[alcarilinque]

You know, I wonder about the okinawan/ryukyu pronunciation of it, too. Sure, its kinkyou, but that's japanese ;)