“myounichi” is a correct but very formal reading of 明日. You won’t hear “myounichi” in normal speech.

The pronunciations “asu” and “ashita” can’t be arrived at by combining the pronunciations of the individual characters. These pronunciations are specific to the combination 明日.

Re: pitch accent

Be aware of it. Imitate native speakers as best you can. Don’t insist too much on the supposed “rules.” And relax. Pitch accent will only rarely cause you to be misunderstood.

I learn most of my kanji pronounciations from seeing them manga or song lyrics and memorizing them. Memorizing them seems to be the only way to learn all of the uses of kanji, and using them in context works best for me.

Anywho, just 2 cents from a stranger.

i also found in this wikibook, they were discussing ways to indicate pitch accent:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese:Discussion#Pitch_Accent

there’s no standard? there must be… hm…

also of interest, this mark-up for furigana: ruby annotation. it places furigana over kanji automagically. but only support by IE on windows. go figure. it’s good for something.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese:Discussion#Furigana_with_ruby_notation
a fellow in the wikibooks site also made a script to make ruby annotation easier.

i’m going to put that on my ‘to do when advanced’ list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

Hmm.

In English dictionaries, there is usually a mark to show the syllable that’s stressed, but I haven’t come across such marks in Japanese dictionaries. Is that because the stresses are so natural that the Japanese take them for granted, or that they’re not standard across different dialects, or that it’s thought to be one subtelty too many for a foreigh student? Or, is it just me buying cheap dictionaries?

There’s a whole section on the subject in Haruhiko Kindaichi’s ‘The Japanese Language’. He refers to this as ‘pitch accent’ (in contrast to ’stress accent’), meaning that the relative pitch of syllables within a word is fixed. Japanese has two pitches, high and low. Each syllable is either high or low: pitch does not change within a syllable (in contrast to Chinese, for example).

Kindaichi goes on to say that there are a limited number of different arrangements of pitch within words. The Tokyo dialect has only 4 types of tone patterns in 4-syllable words: KAmakiri (a mantis); aSAgao (a morning glory); kaRAKAsa (an umbrella); moNOSASHI (a foot rule). The limited number of pitch patterns results in words that can’t be differentiated even by tone.

Anyway, all that being the case, how are we beginners supposed to get pronunciation right from the beginning if pitch accents aren’t made clear in our study materials?

明　＝　１） 明白（めい・はく）；　２）　明日（あ・す、or　みょう・にち）
３）　明らか　（あき・らか）　４）　明　（あきら）　often as a person’s name

It’s nice to have an electronic dictionary. I have one by Seiko, and it’s pretty good. Expensive, though.

ah, i really do need a dictionary for sure now. i tried taking the character: 明, and on my mac doing ‘reverse conversion’… but it gives me:

あきら

but that’s quite different from めい!

I really like your blog. I almost forgot some rules like putting a stress on the ME for AME（飴）. People clearly understand its meaning even without a stress on the ME, especially when the word is used in context.

As to how to pronounce each kanji:

明　＝　めい　

日　＝　ひ

Hope this helps!