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- "このバスは大きいです。"
"このバスは大きいです。"
Translation:This bus is big.
22 Comments
They do but this is more colloquial. We have a similar story in Chinese. The full word for bus is 公共交通汽車 (gōnggòngjiāotōngqìchē) which is contracted more commonly into 公交車 (gōngjiāochē), but the more colloquial word is 巴士 (bāshì) or 大巴 (dàbā). The loanword is preferred because it sounds more casual and friendly over the robotic and overly formal direct word.
Kanji do not have singular pronunciations. Kanji are conceptual, not literal. Pronunciations are based not on the kanji themselves but on their context. There are usually at least 2 pronunciations for each character and often 4 or 5. The pronunciation often depends on whether the the character is connected with other kanji as a compound word (usually on'yomi reading) or is accompanied by kana (usually kun'yomi reading).
Japan has a more native language represented by the word kun'yomi as well as an imported language based on Chinese reading referred to as on'yomi. There are usually multiple ways of expressing the same concept, which might differ in pronunciation even if they all include a common kanji element such as 大.
大 can be pronounced as 'tai', 'dai', 'oo', 'o' (大人), and possibly another that I'm forgetting. It is good practice to memorize a kanji in context but to always have in mind that this is 'a' reading, not 'the' reading.
207
In 大人 neither of the two kanji has any particular reading, it is the whole concept of "big person" (eg. "adult") that is pronounced おとな