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If someone said, Konomi wa konomi desu, would you know what they meant? Maybe it would help to see the kanji and kana:

好みは木の実です。
Konomi wa konomi desu.

Or perhaps things remain unclear. If so, a translation should help:

My preference is nuts.

If you still feel a little confused, thrown off, discombobulated, or miffed without quite knowing why, it’s probably because the yomi didn’t shake out as you expected. The kanji here have atypical yomi, compared with what one usually sees for these characters. Here’s the breakdown:

好み (konomi: preference)

This kanji often appears as 好き (suki: liking, taste, choice).

木の実 (konomi or kinomi: nuts, fruits, berries)     tree + fruit

You may have been tempted to read 木 and 実 as complete words with the yomi of ki and jitsu, respectively. But in this case, you need to take 木の実 as a unit. There are two possible yomi here: konomi and kinomi. The latter is actually more common, but only the konomi yomi allowed for the wordplay above! I also like konomi because it’s a permutation of kimono!

Sample Sentences with 木の実 …

Whether one reads 木の実 as konomi or kinomi, 実 has the yomi of mi in this word. With that yomi, 実 means “fruit.” (As we saw last week, 実 can also have the yomi of sane, which means the seed or pit inside fruit.) Take, for instance, this term:

実がなる (mi ga naru: to bear fruit; produce a crop)

The meaning is simple and clear. As なる (naru) means “to become,” this construction means “to become fruit” or “to become a crop.”

Playing with Fruit …

I should say that if you send 実 out into the world on its own with the yomi of mi, it won’t necessarily conjure up images of peaches or grapes for native speakers. To accomplish that, you’ll need the following word:
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