First opened Thursday, February 16, 2006
生
なま
- head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1
How to read it: a line over a kana means the voice is high there, and ↓ marks where it drops. A kana with no line is low. With no ↓ the pitch stays high to the end and does not drop even on a following particle (が, は).
raw, unprocessed
Nama, “raw”, is from Old Japanese, with numerous derivatives already in use in the Heian period.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.
Written with 生
In a sentence
彼は生の魚を食べない。
He doesn't eat raw fish.
彼は魚を生で食べない。
He doesn't eat raw fish.
Sentences are from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), picked by fixed rules from a dated export and shown unchanged. Nobody has reviewed them one by one.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
- “From Old Japanese. Numerous derivatives already in use in the Heian period.”
Source: Wiktionary: 生 (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
Other readings of 生 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not なま. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
せい
- “From Middle Chinese 生 (MC sraeng|sraengH, “alive; fresh; raw; unprocessed”). The 漢音 (kan'on) reading, so likely a later borrowing from Middle Chinese.”
き
- “Likely a contraction from 生き (iki, “life, living; freshness”).”
しょう
- “From Middle Chinese 生 (MC sraeng|sraengH). The 呉音 (goon) reading, so likely the initial borrowing from Middle Chinese.”
ふ・う
- “Inherited from Old Japanese. There are various theories about the origin of this term, including:”
- “* Apheresis of 生ふ (opu → pu → fu, “to grow”) used predicatively”
- “* Contraction of 原 (paru → pu → fu, “field”)”
- “* Contraction of 生ゆ (payu → pu → fu, “to grow”) used predicatively”
What the labels mean
- 和語 Native Japanese
- Words that were already Japanese before Chinese vocabulary arrived — usually written with kun'yomi and often short.