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I was trying to determine the pitch accent for the phrase 一日二日 when it means "for a day or two" and realised I might not even have the right reading. I thought it would be いちにちににち, but then I realised that the reading of 二日 is still ふつか even when it means "for two days". So should it be いちにちふつか (with the normal pitch accent on each word)?

themathandlanguagetutor
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    Does this answer your question? [When the chinese readings of first 10 days are used?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/48101/when-the-chinese-readings-of-first-10-days-are-used) – broccoli facemask Nov 30 '20 at 08:05
  • Not entirely. It does suggest, to me, that it should be いちにちににち, but the phrases given don't explicitly show this, since only phrases where the numbers are back-to-back are given (and I was corrected when trying to use 一ニ日). Also, if this is correct, I still can't find the pitch accent for ににち. – themathandlanguagetutor Nov 30 '20 at 08:28
  • Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/74639/5010 – naruto Dec 01 '20 at 02:38

1 Answers1

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This word 一日二日 would be only read いちにちふつか following the regular pattern. 2-10 days use Japanese reading (ふつか～とおか), but "1 day" is always Chinese, unless you refer to "the first day of the month" (ついたち < 月 "month" + 立ち "launch").

The accent is usually just like two separate words: いちにち{LHHH}ふつか{LHH}, but merged accents (いちにちふつか{LHHHHHH}, いちにちふつか{LHHHLLL}) are sometimes heard.

However, you can also say the same thing with numbers factored out: 一二日, then it will be exceptionally read いちににち. See this post for more about this formula.

broccoli facemask
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