First opened Monday, December 24, 2007
初級
しょきゅう
- flat (heiban)
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).
elementary level
Shokyū began as shokipu, from the Middle Chinese compound 初級, literally “beginning + level, grade”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
この辞書は初級者に、いやそれどころか上級者にも役に立つ。
This dictionary is useful to beginners, yes, and to advanced learners.
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.
- “/ɕokipu/ → /ɕokiɸu/ → */ɕokiwu/ → /ɕokiu/ → /ɕokjuː/”
- “From Middle Chinese compound 初級 /初级 (tsrhjo kjap?, literally “beginning + level, grade”). Compare modern Min Nan chho͘-kip or Cantonese co¹ kap¹.”
Source: Wiktionary: 初級 (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).
What the labels mean
- 漢語 Sino-Japanese
- Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.