This week’s Word Of The Week is – Choushoku (朝食) meaning breakfast (formal). There are two other versions of breakfast – 朝飯 (Asa-meshi) and the more polite 朝ご飯 (Asa-go-han).

Why are there so many words for breakfast? If you think about it in English we have the same situation as breakfast can also be known as “brekkie”.

Choushoku is made up of two kanji – 朝食 (ちょうしょく).

The first kanji (朝) means morning and has the readings – あさ and チョウ. We’ll be using the チョウ (ちょう – hiragana) reading in today’s example.

As a beginner you’ll first see this kanji in the new N5 level (the first level of the new JLPT) and it can be used in situations such as 今朝 (けさ – this morning) and 毎朝 (まいちょう – every morning).

The second kanji is – 食 – meaning eat or food and the readings are ショク, ジキ, くう, くらう, たべる and はむ.

To wrap up this week’s Word of the Week we join 朝 – morning and 食 – eat, food, which gives us “morning food” eg breakfast.

Examples

Kanji	Kana	Meaning
朝	チョウ	Morning
食	ショク	Eat, Food
今朝	けさ	This morning
明朝	みょうちょう	Tomorrow morning
毎朝	まいちょう	Every morning
食料品店	しょくりょうひんてん	Grocery Store
食卓	しょくたく	Dining Table
外食	がいしょく	Eating out

Please note that I have only included the relevant kanji readings for this example in the table above. Almost all kanji have multiple readings but not all are applicable to the examples in this article.

Any questions? Please leave a comment below.

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