First opened Wednesday, December 15, 2010
四日
よっか
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
four days; fourth day of the month
Yokka is considered a shift from 四日 (yoka), a compound of 四 (yo, “four”) plus 日 (-ka, counter for days).
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
Wiktionary's text doesn't split this word, so each part is one of its kanji (with the okurigana written after it), with the reading and the dictionary meaning KANJIDIC2 gives that character — a word doesn't always use every sense of its kanji.
In a sentence
雨は四日間降り続いた。
The rain lasted four days.
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.
- “Considered to be a shift from 四日(よか) (yoka) below. Ultimately a compound of 四(よ) (yo, “four”) + 日(か) (-ka, counter for days).”
Source: Wiktionary: 四日 (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 四日 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not よっか. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
よか
- “Considered to be the old form of 四日(よっか) (yokka), but the earliest kana attestations are instead ようか (youka, see below) in works like the Kagerō Nikki, which may be the older form.”
ようか
- “Possibly the older form of 四日(よか) (yoka) above. The shift to yoka ~ yokka may have been to avoid homophony with 八日(ようか) (yōka < yauka, “eight days”).”
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.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Rendaku
- The first sound of the second part voices when two native words join (kami → -gami).
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.