What is the difference between ihon and ippon?
You may have seen this if you’ve studied written Japanese, most kanji have several different individual readings (日 can be read “hi,” “nichi,” etc) and several different possible readings when paired with other kanji. The Japanese kanji for Japan is 日本, which can be read as nihon or nippon. Letters often come in related sets like はばぱ (ha ba pa), where the first will often change to the second or third when part of a compound word. (I hope that makes sense). A double letter can sometimes imply emphasis as well, but only in casual Japanese. So yahari (more formal term) changes to yappari (casual or spoken term). But in short, nihon is the more commonly used word nowadays, and yappari is more casual than yahari. Hope that helped!
