鋼 pronunciation


I know that one of the kanji for **Steel** is **鋼** and one of the
pronunciation is **はがね** (hagane). But in some mangas I read this kanji with
the pronunciation **がね** (gane) without the **は** ; like **黒鋼** ( **くろがね**
/Kurogane).

I would like to know what is the difference between the two of them and if
there is any grammar rule that applies in each case.

Thank u very much.




This がね is the [rendaku](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2526/5010) form
of [**かね**](https://jisho.org/word/%E9%87%91), which is a wago (native
Japanese word) that means "money" or "metal" depending on the context. はがね is
etymologically 刃 + かね ("blade metal"). こがね ("yellow metal"), くろがね ("black
metal"), あかがね ("red metal") are old words for gold, iron and cupper,
respectively.

The default kanji for かね in modern Japanese is of course 金, but as you can see
in the link above, several other kanji have been historically assigned to かね,
too. くろがね is basically an obsolete word, but you may still see it used in
fiction (especially fantasy), and one of the old kanji for かね may be used as
well in such cases to add some flavor. So 黒鋼, 黒鉄 and 黒銀 are all possible kanji
for くろがね, but you can usually expect furigana when such nonstandard words are
intentionally used in fiction. In modern standard Japanese, the only kun-
reading of 鋼 is はがね, and it [plainly refers to steel (and only
steel)](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%8B%BC).

By the way, 白金 is a tricky word; it is normally read as はっきん and refers to
platinum ("white gold") in modern Japanese, but it used to be read as
しろがね/しろかね and referred to silver ("white metal").

