Saturday, July 29, 2017

pronunciation - Inaccurate ruby for 等?


I'm reading a book that contains this sentence:




携帯やパソコンでのメール等{とう}のやり取りすらしていない・・・



My first instinct is to read 等 as など, but it has explicitly been given the pronunciation とう via the ruby characters in the text. Of course, とう is a valid reading for 等, but usually only in compound words. Is this a typo, or am I missing some hidden meaning?


This context perfectly fits with the following dictionary definition (デジタル大辞泉), hence my inclination to read it as など:



など【▽等/×抔 】


1 一例を挙げ、あるいは、いくつか並べたものを総括して示し、それに限らず、ほかにも同種類のものがあるという意を表す。…なんか。「赤や黄―の落ち葉」




Answer



Both readings are valid in this sentence, and they're semantically the same. But とう sounds much more formal.



FWIW, 常用漢字表 only gives the readings of とう and ひと-しい for this kanji. など is widely used, but it's a kind of customary reading.


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