nihongo or nihonjin
 

when you want to say japanese girl would you use nihongo or nihonjin for japanese?

In this situation "go" means "language" and "jin" means "person".

Nihonjin.

-go signifies a language. -jin signifies a person/nationality.

Edit: Nevermind, MMM beat me to answering, lol.

Neither means "Japanese girl," if that's what you're asking.

Wouldn't it be 日本の女の子?

Nihonjin or Nihongo or nihonhito?
 

Apparently it isn't. I was corrected when I wrote that. :D It's actually 日本人の女の子 or にほんじん　の　おんなのこ。

My question: In 「日本人は ごはん を たべる まえに...」do you read the kanji as にほんじんor にほんひと?

にほんじん. Typically, in non-name kanji compounds with no kana, you read all the kanji using the Chinese reading (音読み) rather than the Japanese reading (訓読み). じん is 音読み. ひと is 訓読み.

Also, due to a phenomenon called 連諾（れんだく）, ひと would probably have been read びと in this case, were you to use 訓読み.

To illustrate my point about rendaku, here are some examples:
ひと＋ひと＝ひとびと.
はなれ＋はなれ＝はなればなれ.
てん＋こく＝てんごく
etc.

thx for the help.

Thank you very much for saying that!!

For some strange reason, I always think that girl is かのじょ >.>

れんだく <<Ooh! Interesting. :)
Wait a minute, you mean although it is typical to use the onyomi reading it isn't wrong to use にほんびと？

Strange? You're a manga/anime fan as am I :p

No, it is wrong. I mean that if it were not wrong to use kunyomi, then it probably would have been read as bito instead of hito. But it's wrong, so neither is correct.

Use jyosei

ありがとう　ございます。

If you're like 50 years old I don't see a problem with that :mtongue: . You gotta take off the O and have a bit of a growl in your voice to make it authentic though.

It'd also be weird to say "nesan" to an elementary school student (unless she has a little sister who you are aware of... and the person you're talking to is aware that you are aware that they have a little sister). Another case would be if you are younger than the (female) person you're talking to (provided you are fairly close).

On second thought, you probably shouldn't go around calling people you don't know "nesan".