First opened Saturday, June 5, 2010
一
いち
- tail-high (odaka): falls after mora 2
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).
one
Ichi is from Middle Chinese 一 (ʔiɪt̚), and went itɨ → it͡sɨ → it͡ɕɨ on the way.
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 一
In a sentence
道で一ドルを拾った。
I found a dollar in the street.
一を聞いて十を知る。
One word is enough for a wise man.
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.
- “/itɨ/ → /it͡sɨ/ → /it͡ɕɨ/”
- “From Middle Chinese 一 (ʔiɪt̚).”
- “Compare modern Hokkien 一 (it).”
Source: Wiktionary: 一 (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 一 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not いち. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
いつ
- “/itʉ/ → /it͡sʉ/ → /it͡su/”
- “From Middle Chinese 一 (ʔiɪt̚).”
ひと
- “*/pʲitə/ → ⟨pi₁to₂⟩ → /ɸito/ → /hito/”
- “From Old Japanese 一 (pi₁to₂), from earlier Proto-Japonic *pitə. Cognate with Okinawan 一 (tī)”
- “Related to 二 (futa, “two”), which is its double. Compare 三 (mi, “three”) and 六 (mu, “six”), 四 (yo, “four”) and 八 (ya, “eight”).”
ひ
- “Shortening of hito above.”
ひい
- “Long-pronounced form of hi above.”
いい
- “Borrowing from Mandarin 一 (yī) in the Qing Dynasty.”
はじめ
- “From 始(はじ)め (hajime, “beginning, first”), the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 始(はじ)める (hajimeru, “to begin”).”
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.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.