First opened Wednesday, February 23, 2011
朝
あさ
- 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).
morning
Asa is attested in the Man'yōshū of 759, and its old day cycle began in the afternoon.
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 朝
In a sentence
朝に弱いんです。
I am not a morning person.
朝は空気が新鮮だ。
The air is fresh in the morning.
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “From Old Japanese, from Proto-Japonic *asa. Attested in the Man'yōshū of 759.”
- “Historically, a day was split into two halves:”
- “* Afternoon cycle: 朝(あさ) (asa) → 昼(ひる) (hiru) → 夕(ゆう) (yū)”
- “* Evening cycle: 夕(ゆう)べ (yūbe) → 宵(よい) (yoi) → 夜(よ)中(なか) (yonaka) → 暁(あかつき) (akatsuki) → 朝(あした) (ashita)”
- Hedged“While asa and ashita represent the same time period, asa was associated with beginning of the afternoon and ashita was associated with the end of the night. Both terms share an initial as- and are likely etymologically related.”
- Hedged“Beyond Japonic, possibly related to Middle Korean 아ᄎᆞᆷ〮 (àchóm, “morning”) > Korean 아침 (achim). Alexander Vovin believes this is a Koreanic borrowing into Japanese, identifying Japanese つとめて (tsutomete) as the native Japonic root for "morning" (Vovin 2010, p. 224).”
- “* However, つとめて (tsutomete) is not attested until the late 800s or early 900s, although root 夙(つと) (tsuto) as in 夙(つと)に (tsuto ni, “early in the morning”, adverb) appears in the Man'yōshū of 759.”
- Hedged“Alternatively, may be cognate with adjective 浅(あさ)い (asai, “shallow; early”), verbs 浅(あ)せる (aseru, “to become shallow”) and 褪(あ)せる (aseru, “to fade, to become pale”).”
- “* The concepts of "shallow" and "deep" are used in other respects relative to time, such as 夜更(よふ)かし (yofukashi, “staying up late into the night”) and 夜(よ)更(ふ)け (yofuke, “very late at night”), where the fuk- root in both terms is from 深(ふか)い (fukai, “deep; late, long-lasting”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 朝 (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 朝 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not あさ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
あした
- “From Old Japanese. Attested in the Nihon Shoki of 720.”
- “Historically, a day was split into two halves:”
- “* Afternoon cycle: 朝(あさ) (asa) → 昼(ひる) (hiru) → 夕(ゆう) (yū)”
- “* Evening cycle: 夕(ゆう)べ (yūbe) → 宵(よい) (yoi) → 夜(よ)中(なか) (yonaka) → 暁(あかつき) (akatsuki) → 朝(あした) (ashita)”
- “While asa and ashita represent the same time period, asa was associated with beginning of the afternoon and ashita was associated with the end of the night. Both terms share an initial as- and are likely etymologically related.”
ちょう
- “/teu/ → /t͡ɕeu/ → /t͡ɕoː/”
- “The "morning" and "Korea" senses are from Middle Chinese 朝 (MC trjew).”
- “The "imperial court", "dynasty", and "epoch" senses are from Middle Chinese 朝 (MC drjew), using the 漢(かん)音(おん) (kan'on, literally “Han sound”) reading.”
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.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.