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In my last Japanese class, I asked my teacher, who is a native speaker, why the Japanese word for "page" was taken from the English language ("pēji"), because apparently there were already books ("hon"), who had a Japanese name. My teacher could not answer me this. Is there a reason and, more important, how did the Japanese people called a sheet of paper being part of a book?

Eddie Kal
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ixolius
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1 Answers1

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おおがい(ケツ or ヨウ) is used to indicate the pages in Kanji, which is quite rare to see nowadays.

Originally, 「葉」-leaf (ヨウ) was said to be the unit of count for paper and in Edo period we borrowed the kanji 頁 so to mean the pages because its Chinese pronunciation is similar to ‘ヨウ’.

http://kanjibunka.com/kanji-faq/old-faq/q0153/

a20
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