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When a Japanese friend emailed me that he likes to stay up all night, it blew me away on two accounts. First, I can’t imagine wanting to stay up till dawn. I did plenty of that in college, and I’m not eager to revisit the experience. Second, look how he said “throughout the night”:

夜中中 (yonakajū)

Two instances of 中 in a row, each with different readings! Let’s break this down to see what’s going on here:

夜 (YA, yo, yoru) means “night.”
中 (CHŪ, naka) means “in, inside, middle.”

Yonaka combines two kun-yomi (yo and naka) to mean “deep in the night.” (When read as yonaka, 夜中 also means “midnight, but let’s set that aside.)

In 夜中中, the final 中 is a suffix meaning “throughout.” Two notable things about this suffix:

1. It makes the whole compound mean “all night.”

2. As a suffix, 中 has two possible yomi: -CHŪ and -JŪ. In yonakajū, clearly the latter applies.

In any case, I can’t think of another compound in which a suffix creates back-to-back instances of the same kanji. Can you?!
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