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How do you say "fire lotus" in japanese?

A google translate gives me: hi hasu, 火蓮

Looking up each word separately gives me: ka hasu, 火蓮

I wanted to check with my japanese roomate on how he would say it and he said: karen 火蓮

How does the same kanji have all these different pronunciations and romanji?

Update:

Is hi hasu or ka hasu considered wrong?

2 Answers

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  • 9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    some general knowledge on Japanese helps:

    the majority of kanji (=chinese characters) can be read either "sort of Chinese" (= called onyomi, as Japanese has taken over a lot of Chinese words over a span of a fe centuries, just as we've taken over a lot of Latin/Greek vocab)

    or Japanese, called "kunyomi"

    for the kanji 火 that is ka (chin.) or hi (jap.), both meaning fire, of course

    for the kanji 蓮 that is ren (chin.) or hasu (jap.), both meaning lotus, of course.

    Words that are made up out of baked together kanji, are in their majority pronounced in "onyomi", and as a rule: in BOTH components of a compound.

    So, your made up compound "fire lotus" = 火蓮 would be read as "ka-ren" by Japanese

  • 5 years ago

    Japanese Word For Lotus

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