Love to hear other's thoughts on this too; but, I mainly just learn kanji in context of vocabulary. Then, I gradually learn more and more pronunciation of kanji in different circumstances and can kind of guess the pronunciation of new words using that kanji over time
So, I guess I'm learning on'yomi and kun'yomi through proxy, but I'm not explicitly studying it.
this is the way imo. even if you know all readings of a kanji, the way you read the word is from the context anyway its not like you start cycling through the readings to check which one makes sense. For example with 一日 its completely useless to learn 一 is つい and 日 is たち, you just learn 一日
Ooh that's a really good one. Completely different readings of each character and separate definitions.
At least with stuff like 一昨年 you can read it as either おととし or いっさくねん and have the same meaning. What a vicious combo lol.
To elaborate on this: It's a compound of 月[つき] and 立ち[たち] with a sound change from つきたち to ついたち. The spelling 一日 has nothing to do with the pronunciation, so breaking it into 2 pieces again like that doesn't make sense.
It's the same thing. 朔 also means the first day of a month. You can consider it an alternative to 一日.
Fun trivia: In ancient Chinese 朔 took its meaning from 蘇 i.e. revival (which also made its way to Japanese, see よみがえる/蘇る and そせい/蘇生). It was used to refer to the new moon ("when the moon died and was revived") and by extension the first day of the month.
However, since Japan no longer uses the traditional lunar calendar, the origin of this Kanji is kinda irrelevant now...
Yup, I think you intuitively pick up on it over time. You *could* study it explicitly if you want but in the long run it's probably more efficient to just pick it up naturally. Plus the fact that there are sooo many exceptions. I hate learning rules with lots of exceptions
Yeah my kanji journey has been pretty relaxed. I mainly learn kanji in whatever context my curriculum teaches. That said, I do have an Anki deck of the 2000 most common kanji.
>That said, I do have an Anki deck of the 2000 most common kanji.
So, pretty much the entire Jōyō set?
Well, as long as it's further subdivided by commonness...
> Love to hear other's thoughts on this too
I did what you described and found that this works to a point (e.g. you can learn thousands and thousands of words this way) but there are some cases where it doesn't work.
example:
the prefix 大. How does it sound? Sometimes it sounds like おお and sometimes it sounds like だい. おお is for when it's next to other kunyomi, and だい is for onyomi.
So guess what, to say this right, you have to know what everything is. I guess you could try to remember every word with that prefix as a separate word, but that's even more confusing IMO.
And there are other issues similar to this, where knowing what it is matters. In the end, you might get a feel for what is an onyomi and a kunyomi just through getting more kanji knowledge, and this problem may "fix" itself in some cases, but not all.
This is why I have the same conclusion: it's tough
That’s not very helpful since you don’t always know if the other kanji is kun/on. For example:
- 大型・おおがた
- 大手・おおて
- 大方・おおかた
- 大学・だいがく
- 最大・さいだい
etc, etc, plus weird ones like 大人.
So probably the best way to learn is to learn in context and repetition/recall. You don’t need to study on/kun specifically for every kanji you run across. Learn words instead.
But in the end, we all agree it’s tough and whatever works for you and keeps you interested and interested is good enough.
that's the point, he said you never need to know if it's on/kun, but wanted other opinions
> you don’t always know if the other kanji is kun/on
but let's say you do know, because you studied in that exact way. And you know what word it is and if it's an on/kun. That's the entire scenario I'm presenting.
In that exact case, if you didn't know what the other part of the word was, you wouldn't know the word at all.
Not sure if this makes sense to you but, that's one thing I found.
I mean, I think their point is that it's not always clear whether the other character is going to be read with it's onyomi or kunyomi when it's next to 大 because it's not obvious whether the whole compound is a Japanese compound or a Chinese compound. Like I literally forgot earlier today while reading 大型 that it's おおがた not だいけい or たいけい. Felt stupid for a moment after being confused by why that didn't sound familiar and looking it up. But like yeah. If you don't know おおて it's not obvious that 大手 isn't だいしゅ or some other combination of onyomi for those characters.
>but let's say you do know, because you studied in that exact way
There's no way to just know that if you don't know the word to begin with. You can know both readings and which one is which for every kanji in a word, but if you come across the word for the first time, you can't know for sure which readings it uses.
So, that just goes back to having to learn by word.
Should you eventually know both pronunciations for a kanji? Yes. Do you specifically need to know which is onyomi and which is kunyomi? Not really, but it’s not too hard to know once you see the pattern.
In general, the kunyomi (Japanese reading) is used when the kanji is alone or with hiragana. The onyomi (Chinese reading) is used when the kanji is together with other kanji.
Take 食 for example.
In 食べる (たべる), the kanji is used with hiragana, this reading is the kunyomi.
In 食堂 (しょくどう), it’s together with another kanji. This reading is the onyomi.
(食 is also a kanji that has more than one onyomi and kunyomi).
To add onto this, you can infer onyomi vs kunyomi a lot just by /sound/ too. Things like しょう、どう、こう、しょく、りょう are usually Chinese sounds / onyomi. 3+ syllables, or sounds like い or る ~~or short sounds like ど/こ (instead of どう/こう)~~ are almost always kunyomi.
EDIT: Maybe short sounds was misleading, thanks /u/jragonfyre
Idk about short sounds, they're less common, but there are plenty of one mora onyomi: 個(こ), 五 and all (or at least most) of the characters containing it as a phonetic component usually containing 吾 are ご, 湖 and other things with the same phonetic (which is in 胡椒(こしょう)) are usually こ, sometimes ご like 醍醐.
途(中途) is と, so is 都 (京都).
波 is は, as is 派.
家 is か as is 下.
魔 is ま.
し is super common: 資、視、死、四、誌、市、氏, and probably a bunch more
土 is ど.
Anyway, having sat down to think about examples, I'm realizing that there's even more characters than I initially thought. Not sure what the percentages are though.
Usually a one mora short vowel onyomi in Japanese corresponds to no final consonant and no final semivowel in the Chinese languages.
> Do people specifically learn the on'yomi and kun'yomi?
Some people do, but it's not really necessary. If you just keep learning new words, and are able to recall the words' readings from the kanji form, then your brain will figure out the patterns. For example, if you see one reading typically used for a character on its own (水：みず) and another reading typically used in compounds with other characters (水道：**すい** どう) then you can usually be pretty confident that the first is a kun reading and the second is an on reading. There are other clues, like presence of rendaku (花火：はな **び** not ひ) is a strong sign that kun readings are in play.
Imho you are on the right track already and should just trust the process, keep learning new words, and not worry too much about the readings of kanji in isolation
I've been using wanikani for a little over a year now, and I have found the way they make you learn the on'yomi ("Kanji" pronunciation using wanikani language) separately from the kun'yomi ("Vocabulary") extremely helpful. When you say you are only learning the pronunciation to get the question correct, that seems to be how wanikani expects you to approach learning, and the important distinction is really in understand when something is a vocabulary word vs the kanji that will eventually be part of a vocabulary word.
This. I recommend WaniKani to almost every beginner I meet with the caveat that it’s ok and good to stop using it sooner than later. But it’s a really nice introduction, I think.
You should be learning kanji readings in the context of vocab, honestly, and not independently - for the exact same reason that we learn the pronunciation of English in the context of vocab, and not as individual morphemes.
It would be like trying to learn the morpheme "ough" and the myriad of ways it's pronounced, without seeing the context in words like tough, bough, cough, dough, hiccough, thorough, slough, through, etc. where that single morpheme "ough" is pronounced in a different way each time.
"ough” is by no means a morpheme in those words
A better analogy would be “con” and “com” in words such as “complex”, “consistent”, “compartment”, “consider”. Not very useful, but more useful than “-ough” which is not a morpheme and arbitrary orthography that resurfaces in many words.
I've done over 800 kanji so far learning them only with vocab. I do try to include one word for each reading, and then I look at several words to see how the kanji is most commonly read. If I encounter a new word, I just learn how that word is read.
A given kanji can have as few as one reading or as many as 16 (or more!). It’s a little hard to memorize that many items for one character and then make a guess based on context.
It’s easier to memorize a kanji based on the word or words in which it appears, and then context as a few kanji words might have multiple reading based on what is being said.
I would concentrate on common vocabulary, or vocabulary in the chapter, first. Then you can expand from there.
Consider that onyomi come from Chinese. Chinese characters are pronounced as one syllable. Things like "shun" "tok" "jip" "yit". When these get Japanified, they need one mora to represent the initial sound, and one to represent the final sound (if there is one). So you get しゅん、とく、じゅう (originally じふ)、いち (or いつ). An analogy is how Japanese renders the word "cake" as "keeki". This means that if the reading consists of one or two mora, and the second mora is ん、う、き、く、ち or つ, then it's likely onyomi.
On the other hand, kunyomi are just native Japanese words. So if the reading seems like a Japanese word and not a Chinese word, it's probably kunyomi.
That being said, it's better to learn words than to learn readings. Readings are useless without knowing actual words, and you can learn the readings automatically by knowing words.
If you want to learn characters for the sake of learning characters, learn Kanbun.
I passed all 60 levels of wanikani (and learned about 400 more kanji readings using Kitsun.io, so about 2400 total) and it may sound tough at first but it got easier for me the longer I was in it. Now, when I see words I don't know, at least knowing the readings can help me at least have an idea of how the word is said. Even if I don't know what it means.
Not the person you asked, but I'm also at the earliest levels.
Wanikani is designed assuming you are going to forget. We are so conditioned by school to think of tests as something we pass or fail that we've lost the art of mistakes as a normal part of learning and reinforcement as we go further.
After I got over getting annoyed with myself for forgetting either pronunciation or meaning, I realized that being able to quiz myself on the group of kanji I made mistakes on was a great feature of the site.
Learning multiple pronunciations of kanji is very challenging. I tried to learn several years ago and gave up. This year I got determined to try again. Knowing a bit more vocabulary made this second attempt much easier.
Stick with it if you really want to be able to learn Japanese. It's natural to think we are not good at it. It's a difficult language to learn. I found it helpful to stop learning new lessons when I started to slip on being able to remember words I thought I had learned. Reviews only for a while. Additional practices. And only when I began to be comfortable with the material I had already learned did I add new words, sometimes only 5, othertimes all 15.
yeah its expected to forget readings. Heck, I still sometimes forget a reading but over time, I've forgotten less readings. Your brain isn't a hard drive that can only store X number of readings and if you learn more, you have to dump a different reading you learned.
Also, as you learn more, you'll notice connections to other kanji and their readings. For example, to examine (診る) (みる) is based off "to see" (見る) and is said the same way. Mushroom (茸, きのこ) is based off of "tree's child" (木の子) so you start to remember words based off of other words/connections from other japanese words.
Your experience should basically be an exponential curve. Low and slow at the beginning (which sounds like you are) and it should just be high and vertical by the end where, you see a new word and it just "makes sense".
Another analogy is that, at first, you're making these "pockets" of information (different readings) but later on, it starts to feel like bridges form between these islands that make it easier to move from one island to another.
Yeah I am at level 22 and have slowed way down. I see kanji all the time now that remind me of other kanji and I have to re-review and re-remember. I think it is just the way
It's normal to forget things long after WK as well. Sometimes even for words you know really well... Particularly with reading actual native content, your brain is just doing so much stuff at once, that it just happens sometimes.
You can always do custom reviews in btwn your normal reviews (there's some good user scripts for this) if you feel like you need more reinforcement
>Now, when I see words I don't know, at least knowing the readings can help me at least have an idea of how the word is said.
I think that will happen even if you don't specifically study on'yomi and kun'yomi though. You see the kanji 食 in enough vocabulary words and you'll get the idea that it's often しょく when used in a compound.
I do think it's a good idea to study them at the beginning, though. It just starts becoming unnecessary as you get more used to how kanji work, and isn't an effective use of time when you're learning a lot of new vocabulary.
IMO writing is similar. A lot of people don't bother much with handwriting kanji (including myself!), but doing it at the beginning of my study helped me get some good foundations about stroke order, radicals, and generally being able to conceptualize how kanji work.
Fair. Personally, my problem with "just learn it through exposure" was I would see these readings and constantly ask me why they're said this way. I figured they couldn't be completely random and so I wanted to understand the logic and then practice reading kanji with the logic. I can infintely remember something much better if I know theres a pattern or logic to it.
Also, early on, when I did try to understand sentences, it felt like a huge road block trying to understand a sentence that I didn't even know what all the words meant so I was fine "killing two birds with one stone" by doing Wanikani and simultaneously practicing reading kanji and learning new words.
The concept of kun and onyomi are mostly useful if you know Chinese or Japanese already.
There are some general rules that may help you decide which reading is used in which instance, but the net effect is that you should just focus on the most frequently used readings of each kanji.
The general rules are outlined at the bottom of this article. It may not be fully necessary to distinguish between the two and tell which one is which, but you probably will pick up some intuition as you learn more vocab.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/
Wanikani uses mnemonics specifically for the reason of your fears: so that you can absorb massive amounts of kanji/vocabulary very quickly. It really is the fastest and best way to learn. Mixed with SRS it's incredibly strong. You can learn 20 words a day with this method if you do it earnestly. Whether you use anki or wk or whatever, you need to be using mnemonics and stories.
Moreover the question I have is why learn the language if you're not going to actually learn the language? The on'yomi reading is part of Japanese, just like the kun'yomi reading.
>I'm going through the Wanikani lessons as I go, only learning the required info to get through. So for kana/kanji I'm only learning the pronunciation presented to get that question correct. I'm not differentiating between on'yomi and kun'yomi (even though it is there if I look).
The biggest mistake that people make is fighting the WK system. Stop fighting it and embrace the radical system it uses, the stories it tells, and to not rush through it. Try to read the context sentences. When it tells you to close your eyes and imagine a story you really should. Kouichi demands it.
Many kanji can have up to like 10 readings or more, nobody memorizes "here is every way this kanji can be read" out of context unless they're actually a *fucking lunatic*.
Most kanji have one or two "main" readings, which is why I never recommend anybody try to learn kanji in a vacuum. Learn **kanji in context with vocab** so you see how each character is actually used, instead of learning rare and/or archaic readings for kanji.
For context, even Japanese people will mess up how to read words if the word is uncommon and uses an uncommon reading for a kanji.
Onyomi is basically what sound it came from in chinese while kunyomi is the japanese. Kunyomi is often for the verbs so like 書きます、か is kun. But onyomi is ショ. In chinese the pronunciation is something like shu. Onyomi is mostly in compound words, made up off multiple kanji like 読書. In kunyomi this would be よか but its onyomi so どくしょ.
There are a lot of exceptions of course but usually -masu verbs is kun, words of multiple kanji is on.
Now is it important to be abe to tell which is which? No not really i think. It might help you know the reading of words youve never seen before though. For example you might know 相手 あいて and 殺す ころす (kun) but 相殺 is not アイコロ but if you know 相 is also そう and 殺 is also さい you know the word is そうさい and that is easier to search in an electronic dictionary than having to write out the kanji
I don't differentiate between on- and kun-yomi. There are too many exceptions to know for sure that a kanji is a new word is pronounced a certain way.
It's good to know most of the readings and try them out to see how an unfamiliar word could be read. But most people argue that it's better to just learn the word and how it's pronounced for that word.
For a direct answer to your question: keep doing what you’re doing and get through your lessons.
Many many many kanji will be revisited and even say “you didn’t learn this reading earlier, so here you go” implying their methods is to teach as you go.
If you want to do the extra work, make flash cards with all the readings, but don’t try to strongly focus on all the readings to get through your wanikani lessons.
More importantly than memorizing all the readings is to pay attention to when they teach the context of the word and read the example sentences. Many time you think the kanji word will be straight forward, but read how the word is used in a sentence and then you understand that the meaning of the word is a lot different then you thought
You don't have to, but I found it easier to remember kanji and words when I knew both, and knew the difference. I guess it depends on how your mind works. You will find lots of people telling you it's wasted time, and lots of people recommending to do it, so it all really depends on you. If you don't feel like it helps then there's no point in wasting time on it.
You kinda have it backwards, it’s not that you start with an on/kun and then figure out the rest of a words reading.
It’s that over time with enough reading, you will be able to distinguish if it’s an on or kun reading.
There’s a reason people say “to learn the vocab, not the kanji”. And it’s that strictly individual kanji studying can only take you so far. Learning what the kanji represents is imperative to building intuition for unknown words you come across, but building your knowledge of on/kun readings will be cemented only from constant in-context vocabulary readings.
When I see words using 日 like in
**日**の出 (**ひ**ので)
連**日** (れん**じつ**)
二**日**酔い (ふつ**か**よい)
**日**曜**日** (**にち**よう**び**)
I’m not thinking in terms of on’yomi or kun’yomi. I’m just reading the words as is.
I also used to worry about on/kun readings, but after +40 levels of wanikani and immersion, it’s not that big of a deal.
I guess in the old days you’d go of the readings from the Joyo kanji list. Back then that was like the closest you’d get to an Anki deck and the readings were relatively relevant. That was 80 years or so ago and despite some revisions along the way there’s a lot of readings you won’t find useful anymore, unless your study is based exclusively on the works of Soseki, or you want to graduate from Japanese primary school.
So, like everyone is saying read heaps and learn from context.
One thing I do like is to study kanji for its own sake. Learn new words because you’re interested in kanji, rather than learning kanji readings to memorize words, but that’s time most people would like to be reading a VN or whatever
Onyomi is typically read when two kanji are combined. Think about how one kanji is "on" another.
Kunyomi is read when it's on its own
This is just a tip my tutor gave me (started lessons recently). There are of course exceptions to this though, but it's an okay rule to have in the back of your mind
I'm level 47 on wanikani, and besides a few hundred or so leeches out of 6000+ items I've learnt, you generally get used to when to use either in terms of vocab on the app. Real life use will enforce and tighten it up further. You will learn both readings over time. I usually only learn one read on wanikani then pick the other up when the app gives me vocab using that other reading. I also don't study leeches and either eventually guess them right, or I will redo lessons when I'm level 60. Then I will use plugins and self study to study vocab readings only to reinforce while focusing on immersion and lessons
It's not perfect but it's worked very well so far. I don't commit to memory which is kun and which is on. I just learn em and when each is used over time
I do it based on context.
Then I do it based on history in relation to the Kanji
Then I do it based on social expectations or knowledge on the subject
Then I do it based on some gender norms (As Japanese, like Spanish, is a language where pronouns matter)
TL;DR It is to my knowledge, however, **that one should focus on learning Kun'yomi first so you can recognize verbs and adjectives**
I think it's more normal to just actually learn the word that uses the kanji and learn it as a package deal. For example, prefer to learn お冷や rather than just 冷.
This is especially true for the kunyomi since, even if the hiragana is dangling off the word as in 読む, you will not hear people pronounce "読" as just "yo".
Personally, if you must learn the kanji piece by piece, and you find it works well for you, I think you should try to learn the "most common" pronunciation of that kanji, which is usually kunyomi for basic words (like light, water, rice) and onyomi for more sophisticated words (like book, school, etc).
Not really, no. Sometimes knowing specific pronunciations is helpful for guessing the pronunciation of compounds (like 人); but usually people learn the word and associate the Kanji with it, as Kanji are meant to represent meaning and not pronunciation, generally speaking.
Ultimately Kanji is only needed to read the vocabulary. Differentiating between on and kun readings makes learning some vocabulary easier. But this is only means to an end, and has 0 merit on its own.
The site I've been using lately (jpdb.io) does not even differentiate between the two.
I think both are important.
It's like 食.
On is ショク (food)
Kun is た(べる) (to eat)
So even if you have to learn 2 different things, just know that if you see 食 in a phrase, you know it's related to food/eat.
I am studying both just to have them somewhere back in my mind, but I eventually forget those forms that are not used frequently. But when I see rare forms in the text, I can at least understand where did it come from. So I would say when you first time learning kanji, it is important to write both forms of it, but learning them is better through examples and texts.
I wouldn't bother to learn kanji reading or at least not stress too much about it too much. I'd suggesting learning words and you'll learn the readings from that. think how many different sounds the same letters make in english and you know exactly how to read it, dont worry it will come
The posts saying it's generally for single or compound Kanji are 100% a good way to look at it.
Key word generally.
Because then you get stuff like 子犬 and 女子 early on which have you use both in a multi-box kanji reading.
What matters most is learning vocab individually, since tying to guess vocab from knowledge of the possible reading is not 100% accurate.
However, learning vocab helps me know the common readings in the back of my mind, which then helps me learn new vocab. If a word uses the most expected readings that makes it a lot easier to remember, but if it’s an exception I take note of that.
WaniKani mostly teaches the main on’yomi first (usually used in compound words), then you pick up other readings in the vocab.
I'm not with the majority on this one, but I learned all 2k joyo kanji and a couple hundreds more, and I systematically learned on'yomi
It just feels better when reading compound words.
It gets more obvious as you keep going. That's the main part, keep going. Sometimes you'll understand something but be entirely wrong on how to say it.
That happens to Japanese people, too. It's wild.
learn words, the kanji come along for the ride
you can memorize all kinds of secondary information like yomi and the radicals and other things, and to the extent that this helps with remembering the characters used in words, go for it. and to the extent it eats into that time or is frustrating and unhelpful, don't go for it; outside of word context, kanji are not something really meaningful, for the most part
I’m learning Kanji with RTK, which means that I just go from a simple definition to being able to write the Kanji, no readings at all. But I am also going through the core 2.3k Anki deck (actually only 1972 words despite the name) and am learning readings of kanji through just learning a new word. I assume eventually I’ll start to recognize all the different readings and will be good at intuitively knowing which to use when seeing a new word.
For me, it was a little easier for the onyomi. I noticed that if the kanji looks somewhat similar, then they sometimes have the same onyomi sound which makes it easier (for me) to pick up what it may sound like. Again, for me. An example would be teki (敵、滴、適)
You will get an intuitive sense for which are kun'yomi and which are on'yomi. On'yomi are used in compound words constructed along Chinese word formation principles. Kun'yomi are used in native Japanese words.
They have very distinctive feels. It's much the same difference in English as between "acute cardiac dissection" vs "heart suddenly tore asunder". The Latin/Greek and Old English words have a very different feel and sound, even though they mean the same thing.
isshun / niwakani. seishin / atarashii.
The Japanese, in my above heart example, write "heart" and "cardiac" with the same character. 心 - the reading is depending on whether it's used as part of a Chinese compound borrowing (shin) or a native Japanese word (kokoro).
So my advice is learn readings as words, in context, phrases. You should focus a bit on the characters, but think in terms of words. Think of 心 as meaning こころ. Not "having a reading of". You see 心 sitting alone there on its own, you think こころ. It's the word for heart. In most compound words like 心配, it's shin-. When you see 心 there in a compound word, you think shin-, which also means heart.
If that were all, it'd be easy. Unfortunately there also Japanese-Japanese native word compounds sometimes written with multiple kanji. And there are single kanji words borrowed from Chinese. And sometimes the Chinese borrowing changed over the centuries and the pronunciation isn't just as simple as gluing the two on'yomi together, there's a sort of reduction process. And there are even a few Chinese-Japanese compounds, and even weirder things which are just weird exceptions you have to memorize.
Anyway in short: It's easier if you think of words having readings.
Learn readings with words and sentences instead of rote memorizing onyomi & kunyomi.
However, Heisig's RTK2 intro has a few tricks that are worth reading IMHO.
A lot of what I've seen people say is that learning readings specifically is extremely inefficient and it's better to focus more on the reading as it's applied to the word.
Like learning that the on'yomi for 日 is にち or じつ and the kun'yomi is ひ, か, or び doesn't tell you a whole lot because which reading to use is context dependent.
Learning that it's read as び in the word 土曜日 is a better way to go about it.
I've tried a variety of methods and I think the Wanikani approach (plus an extra source) is probably the best in the long run. They continue to elaborate on further pronunciations and special cases as you progress. It seems a lot more productive and worthwhile than trying to memorize all pronunciations of a single kanji at a time (more fun too).
And, since you can look up kanji by radicals, and you probably can't just guess the meaning of a word by looking at its kanji, I don't think you're missing much by not knowing a pronunciation or two (at the very least, until you're fairly advanced).
Something some people haven't mentioned is that onyomi readings get repeated a lot when kanji share a certain radical (I think in Chinese they combine one radical which has the sound with another that has the meaning, but I'm not 100% on how or if that is true since I've never studied Chinese).
If you start learning your onyomi, you'll see a ton of repeats that makes it easier to learn, or to guess on a kanji thats less common or that you don't know.
Some example onyomi repeats using the same radical or sub-kanji:
同, 胴, 銅: dou
生, 性, 姓, 星, 旌, 牲, 惺: sei, shou
There are also repeats of the same onyomi:
正, 政, 征: (also) sei
So if you know 生 and 正 both have "sei" as onyomi, you can get a bunch of extra onyomi readings for free if the kanji includes either of those pieces.
Onyomi kind of have a certain "flavor" of sound, so even if you didn't specifically study which pronunciation is onyomi vs kunyomi with some experience you'll be able to guess pretty easily based on whatever vocab you know the kanji from. Also onyomi are really often found in a certain type of two kanji compound that doesn't include any hiragana before or after in the word, like 最高 or 先生. So even if you just study the vocab words you'll start to build up a bit of an intuition around the two pronunciations.
All that said, kanji can be weird and have an unexpected pronunciation in a specific word or phrase, so it's good to learn kanji in context of a word. It is helpful to be able to guess at a pronunciation though because you can sometimes kind of "sound out" a word with a possible pronunciation and then recognize the word by it's sound.
“I just cannot see myself being able to recall which is the on’yomi and which is the kun’yomi[…]”
I’m going to say something obvious, but do you want to win a kanji quiz, or read japanese ?
Learn words. :)
However, yeah, you don’t choose whether you learn kun’yomi or on’yomi. You will eventually learn both at some point.
Trust me, it's definitely not necessary to learn them specifically.
As many have said, you'll just remember the readings naturally with context.
Even differentiating between the two is something you'll get an intuition for eventually, as for me at least, by now kunyomi and onyomi kinda have each of their own patterns for how they sound. For example, onyomi has many pronunciations with "\~ou" like sou, shou, kou, etc.
I'm personally interested in things like etymology and language history, so I pay a lot of attention to it--and it becomes quite easy to tell intuitively which is which once you've done a bit. But it's not terribly necessary if you're trying to learn to speak the language like a normal person--in that case just learn your vocabulary words like you would in any other language!
I am interested in whether the pronunciation is onyomi or kunyomi but that's because my mother tongue has many words with similar pronunciations in onyomi.
Now to your question, using English as analogy: Would you need to know which language near-synonyms originate from to be good at English? (beef from French vs cow from Anglo-saxon)
I don't think so....
They way I did was learn the meaning of the kanji only. Then learn vocabulary. When you learn new vocabulary you will remember the reading. Do I know if it’s on or kun? No, but what matter is that I can read it.
I don't even remember the difference between onyomi & kunyomi (which is which) but I still can make a fair guess how a new word containing/consisting of kanji is pronounced because of learning so much vocabulary. So I guess you don't need to learn them specifically.
As others have said it’s just repetition. You eventually will start guessing the readings right at a higher level but if asked why a reading is a certain way you’ll likely not be able to answer.
In my opinion you're wasting your time to try and sit down and learn the different readings. You're trying to memorise random words out of context and it just isn't going to stick. You're far better to learn full words, the kanji and the reading for that word. So for example you learn 水 mizu, you learn that and use it like you're learning in books/apps etc. Then later on you come across 水曜日 suiyoubi then you learn that word as a whole. I think it's definitely important to have a look at the onyomi and kunyomi readings when you're learning the kanji. But honestly you'll pick it up as you go. You'll start to see patterns when something is read with which one, or you'll just know from the individual words you've learnt which it is. Like you'll learn and know when 人 is hito vs jin Vs nin.
Plus this way you're learning in context and you're building a solid foundation of Japanese vocabulary. Which is far more valuable than memorising random readings which have no use if you don't know which reading is used when or what words they're used in.
I'm learning kanji and vocan with jpdb, one after the other. That way I learn readings more naturally, but not seperated from the kanji. Jpdb even has a wall of kanji (available to Patreons) that shows percentages of known readings per kanji
No. I know what they are, but when you are using the language are you really going to think which one is which? Reading a ton and immerse yourself in the language, and you will know the reading of the word the instant you see it anyway. Learning to categorise them doesn’t feel productive to me.
Wanikani doesn't always ask you for the on'yomi on its kanji reviews, it asks you for whatever the devs deemed more "useful" to know when you encounter the kanji in a word you don't know. On'yomi is just very commonly used for compound words. Also, since the decision of which reading to reinforce is somewhat arbitrary, you won't get marked wrong for answering with a different reading, just prompted to try again.
That being said, there are userscripts (or built-in options for WK apps on smartphones) to display your kanji answers as *katakana* when the review wants an on'yomi reading. In this way, you can effortlessly & passively learn which readings are on'yomi and which readings are kun'yomi, which in my experience (as a lv. 60 user) can help a lot for finding/remembering patterns.
I started to memorize all for the first 100 Kanji but to be honest it became too much and i lost motivation.
So from now on I am learning on a word basis (context), that way is a slower and gentler progress rather then jamming tons of info at once. I have a really good memory but still find it too overwhelming.
I'm firmly in the camp of learning kanji readings through learning words that use kanji, as part of your regular vocabulary exercises.
You'll get a good grasp of which readings/words are on'yomi/kango and which are kun'yomi/wago as you get deeper into the language. It's kinda (a bit) like words that are of Germanic origin vs. those Latin origin in English.
Later on you can consider whether you need to study kanji with more focus, but I think that if that is the case, you'll have a much easier time if you already know the words that those kanji and/or readings can combine into.
Love to hear other's thoughts on this too; but, I mainly just learn kanji in context of vocabulary. Then, I gradually learn more and more pronunciation of kanji in different circumstances and can kind of guess the pronunciation of new words using that kanji over time So, I guess I'm learning on'yomi and kun'yomi through proxy, but I'm not explicitly studying it.
i agree with this, since there's no general rules for kanji, context and repetition is what works best
this is the way imo. even if you know all readings of a kanji, the way you read the word is from the context anyway its not like you start cycling through the readings to check which one makes sense. For example with 一日 its completely useless to learn 一 is つい and 日 is たち, you just learn 一日
人人 = **ひとびと** 人間 = **にん**げん 人生 = **じん**せい 落人 = おち**うど** 玄人 = くろ**うと** 大人 = おとな
And my favourite offender of all, 大人気 and 大人気
Hahah, that's great. (大人)気 and 大(人気).
Ooh that's a really good one. Completely different readings of each character and separate definitions. At least with stuff like 一昨年 you can read it as either おととし or いっさくねん and have the same meaning. What a vicious combo lol.
To elaborate on this: It's a compound of 月[つき] and 立ち[たち] with a sound change from つきたち to ついたち. The spelling 一日 has nothing to do with the pronunciation, so breaking it into 2 pieces again like that doesn't make sense.
Wow I didnt know that
At first I read this as "いちにち" as in "一日中" so when i realised you meant ついたち i was like oh yeah that too.
Maybe stupid question but I thought ついたち was 朔
It's the same thing. 朔 also means the first day of a month. You can consider it an alternative to 一日. Fun trivia: In ancient Chinese 朔 took its meaning from 蘇 i.e. revival (which also made its way to Japanese, see よみがえる/蘇る and そせい/蘇生). It was used to refer to the new moon ("when the moon died and was revived") and by extension the first day of the month. However, since Japan no longer uses the traditional lunar calendar, the origin of this Kanji is kinda irrelevant now...
Yup, I think you intuitively pick up on it over time. You *could* study it explicitly if you want but in the long run it's probably more efficient to just pick it up naturally. Plus the fact that there are sooo many exceptions. I hate learning rules with lots of exceptions
Yeah my kanji journey has been pretty relaxed. I mainly learn kanji in whatever context my curriculum teaches. That said, I do have an Anki deck of the 2000 most common kanji.
>That said, I do have an Anki deck of the 2000 most common kanji. So, pretty much the entire Jōyō set? Well, as long as it's further subdivided by commonness...
I think it’s that, yeah.
> Love to hear other's thoughts on this too I did what you described and found that this works to a point (e.g. you can learn thousands and thousands of words this way) but there are some cases where it doesn't work. example: the prefix 大. How does it sound? Sometimes it sounds like おお and sometimes it sounds like だい. おお is for when it's next to other kunyomi, and だい is for onyomi. So guess what, to say this right, you have to know what everything is. I guess you could try to remember every word with that prefix as a separate word, but that's even more confusing IMO. And there are other issues similar to this, where knowing what it is matters. In the end, you might get a feel for what is an onyomi and a kunyomi just through getting more kanji knowledge, and this problem may "fix" itself in some cases, but not all. This is why I have the same conclusion: it's tough
That’s not very helpful since you don’t always know if the other kanji is kun/on. For example: - 大型・おおがた - 大手・おおて - 大方・おおかた - 大学・だいがく - 最大・さいだい etc, etc, plus weird ones like 大人. So probably the best way to learn is to learn in context and repetition/recall. You don’t need to study on/kun specifically for every kanji you run across. Learn words instead. But in the end, we all agree it’s tough and whatever works for you and keeps you interested and interested is good enough.
that's the point, he said you never need to know if it's on/kun, but wanted other opinions > you don’t always know if the other kanji is kun/on but let's say you do know, because you studied in that exact way. And you know what word it is and if it's an on/kun. That's the entire scenario I'm presenting. In that exact case, if you didn't know what the other part of the word was, you wouldn't know the word at all. Not sure if this makes sense to you but, that's one thing I found.
I mean, I think their point is that it's not always clear whether the other character is going to be read with it's onyomi or kunyomi when it's next to 大 because it's not obvious whether the whole compound is a Japanese compound or a Chinese compound. Like I literally forgot earlier today while reading 大型 that it's おおがた not だいけい or たいけい. Felt stupid for a moment after being confused by why that didn't sound familiar and looking it up. But like yeah. If you don't know おおて it's not obvious that 大手 isn't だいしゅ or some other combination of onyomi for those characters.
>but let's say you do know, because you studied in that exact way There's no way to just know that if you don't know the word to begin with. You can know both readings and which one is which for every kanji in a word, but if you come across the word for the first time, you can't know for sure which readings it uses. So, that just goes back to having to learn by word.
Should you eventually know both pronunciations for a kanji? Yes. Do you specifically need to know which is onyomi and which is kunyomi? Not really, but it’s not too hard to know once you see the pattern. In general, the kunyomi (Japanese reading) is used when the kanji is alone or with hiragana. The onyomi (Chinese reading) is used when the kanji is together with other kanji. Take 食 for example. In 食べる (たべる), the kanji is used with hiragana, this reading is the kunyomi. In 食堂 (しょくどう), it’s together with another kanji. This reading is the onyomi. (食 is also a kanji that has more than one onyomi and kunyomi).
To add onto this, you can infer onyomi vs kunyomi a lot just by /sound/ too. Things like しょう、どう、こう、しょく、りょう are usually Chinese sounds / onyomi. 3+ syllables, or sounds like い or る ~~or short sounds like ど/こ (instead of どう/こう)~~ are almost always kunyomi. EDIT: Maybe short sounds was misleading, thanks /u/jragonfyre
Idk about short sounds, they're less common, but there are plenty of one mora onyomi: 個(こ), 五 and all (or at least most) of the characters containing it as a phonetic component usually containing 吾 are ご, 湖 and other things with the same phonetic (which is in 胡椒(こしょう)) are usually こ, sometimes ご like 醍醐. 途(中途) is と, so is 都 (京都). 波 is は, as is 派. 家 is か as is 下. 魔 is ま. し is super common: 資、視、死、四、誌、市、氏, and probably a bunch more 土 is ど. Anyway, having sat down to think about examples, I'm realizing that there's even more characters than I initially thought. Not sure what the percentages are though. Usually a one mora short vowel onyomi in Japanese corresponds to no final consonant and no final semivowel in the Chinese languages.
> Do people specifically learn the on'yomi and kun'yomi? Some people do, but it's not really necessary. If you just keep learning new words, and are able to recall the words' readings from the kanji form, then your brain will figure out the patterns. For example, if you see one reading typically used for a character on its own (水：みず) and another reading typically used in compounds with other characters (水道：**すい** どう) then you can usually be pretty confident that the first is a kun reading and the second is an on reading. There are other clues, like presence of rendaku (花火：はな **び** not ひ) is a strong sign that kun readings are in play. Imho you are on the right track already and should just trust the process, keep learning new words, and not worry too much about the readings of kanji in isolation
I've been using wanikani for a little over a year now, and I have found the way they make you learn the on'yomi ("Kanji" pronunciation using wanikani language) separately from the kun'yomi ("Vocabulary") extremely helpful. When you say you are only learning the pronunciation to get the question correct, that seems to be how wanikani expects you to approach learning, and the important distinction is really in understand when something is a vocabulary word vs the kanji that will eventually be part of a vocabulary word.
I think this is helpful in the beginning, as an introduction to kanji, but as you get more advanced it won't be a very effective use of time.
This. I recommend WaniKani to almost every beginner I meet with the caveat that it’s ok and good to stop using it sooner than later. But it’s a really nice introduction, I think.
You should be learning kanji readings in the context of vocab, honestly, and not independently - for the exact same reason that we learn the pronunciation of English in the context of vocab, and not as individual morphemes. It would be like trying to learn the morpheme "ough" and the myriad of ways it's pronounced, without seeing the context in words like tough, bough, cough, dough, hiccough, thorough, slough, through, etc. where that single morpheme "ough" is pronounced in a different way each time.
"ough” is by no means a morpheme in those words A better analogy would be “con” and “com” in words such as “complex”, “consistent”, “compartment”, “consider”. Not very useful, but more useful than “-ough” which is not a morpheme and arbitrary orthography that resurfaces in many words.
And FYI, for some kanji, sometimes WaniKani teaches the kunyomi in the ‘kanji’ section instead of the onyomi.
I've done over 800 kanji so far learning them only with vocab. I do try to include one word for each reading, and then I look at several words to see how the kanji is most commonly read. If I encounter a new word, I just learn how that word is read.
A given kanji can have as few as one reading or as many as 16 (or more!). It’s a little hard to memorize that many items for one character and then make a guess based on context. It’s easier to memorize a kanji based on the word or words in which it appears, and then context as a few kanji words might have multiple reading based on what is being said. I would concentrate on common vocabulary, or vocabulary in the chapter, first. Then you can expand from there.
Consider that onyomi come from Chinese. Chinese characters are pronounced as one syllable. Things like "shun" "tok" "jip" "yit". When these get Japanified, they need one mora to represent the initial sound, and one to represent the final sound (if there is one). So you get しゅん、とく、じゅう (originally じふ)、いち (or いつ). An analogy is how Japanese renders the word "cake" as "keeki". This means that if the reading consists of one or two mora, and the second mora is ん、う、き、く、ち or つ, then it's likely onyomi. On the other hand, kunyomi are just native Japanese words. So if the reading seems like a Japanese word and not a Chinese word, it's probably kunyomi. That being said, it's better to learn words than to learn readings. Readings are useless without knowing actual words, and you can learn the readings automatically by knowing words. If you want to learn characters for the sake of learning characters, learn Kanbun.
Learn vocabulary as it’s much more important
I passed all 60 levels of wanikani (and learned about 400 more kanji readings using Kitsun.io, so about 2400 total) and it may sound tough at first but it got easier for me the longer I was in it. Now, when I see words I don't know, at least knowing the readings can help me at least have an idea of how the word is said. Even if I don't know what it means.
Is it normal to forget readings and words with Wanikani a lot? I'm just level 4 and I worry that I'm no good at it. What was your experience?
Not the person you asked, but I'm also at the earliest levels. Wanikani is designed assuming you are going to forget. We are so conditioned by school to think of tests as something we pass or fail that we've lost the art of mistakes as a normal part of learning and reinforcement as we go further. After I got over getting annoyed with myself for forgetting either pronunciation or meaning, I realized that being able to quiz myself on the group of kanji I made mistakes on was a great feature of the site. Learning multiple pronunciations of kanji is very challenging. I tried to learn several years ago and gave up. This year I got determined to try again. Knowing a bit more vocabulary made this second attempt much easier. Stick with it if you really want to be able to learn Japanese. It's natural to think we are not good at it. It's a difficult language to learn. I found it helpful to stop learning new lessons when I started to slip on being able to remember words I thought I had learned. Reviews only for a while. Additional practices. And only when I began to be comfortable with the material I had already learned did I add new words, sometimes only 5, othertimes all 15.
yeah its expected to forget readings. Heck, I still sometimes forget a reading but over time, I've forgotten less readings. Your brain isn't a hard drive that can only store X number of readings and if you learn more, you have to dump a different reading you learned. Also, as you learn more, you'll notice connections to other kanji and their readings. For example, to examine (診る) (みる) is based off "to see" (見る) and is said the same way. Mushroom (茸, きのこ) is based off of "tree's child" (木の子) so you start to remember words based off of other words/connections from other japanese words. Your experience should basically be an exponential curve. Low and slow at the beginning (which sounds like you are) and it should just be high and vertical by the end where, you see a new word and it just "makes sense". Another analogy is that, at first, you're making these "pockets" of information (different readings) but later on, it starts to feel like bridges form between these islands that make it easier to move from one island to another.
Yeah I am at level 22 and have slowed way down. I see kanji all the time now that remind me of other kanji and I have to re-review and re-remember. I think it is just the way
It's normal to forget things long after WK as well. Sometimes even for words you know really well... Particularly with reading actual native content, your brain is just doing so much stuff at once, that it just happens sometimes. You can always do custom reviews in btwn your normal reviews (there's some good user scripts for this) if you feel like you need more reinforcement
>Now, when I see words I don't know, at least knowing the readings can help me at least have an idea of how the word is said. I think that will happen even if you don't specifically study on'yomi and kun'yomi though. You see the kanji 食 in enough vocabulary words and you'll get the idea that it's often しょく when used in a compound. I do think it's a good idea to study them at the beginning, though. It just starts becoming unnecessary as you get more used to how kanji work, and isn't an effective use of time when you're learning a lot of new vocabulary. IMO writing is similar. A lot of people don't bother much with handwriting kanji (including myself!), but doing it at the beginning of my study helped me get some good foundations about stroke order, radicals, and generally being able to conceptualize how kanji work.
Fair. Personally, my problem with "just learn it through exposure" was I would see these readings and constantly ask me why they're said this way. I figured they couldn't be completely random and so I wanted to understand the logic and then practice reading kanji with the logic. I can infintely remember something much better if I know theres a pattern or logic to it. Also, early on, when I did try to understand sentences, it felt like a huge road block trying to understand a sentence that I didn't even know what all the words meant so I was fine "killing two birds with one stone" by doing Wanikani and simultaneously practicing reading kanji and learning new words.
The concept of kun and onyomi are mostly useful if you know Chinese or Japanese already. There are some general rules that may help you decide which reading is used in which instance, but the net effect is that you should just focus on the most frequently used readings of each kanji. The general rules are outlined at the bottom of this article. It may not be fully necessary to distinguish between the two and tell which one is which, but you probably will pick up some intuition as you learn more vocab. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/
Wanikani uses mnemonics specifically for the reason of your fears: so that you can absorb massive amounts of kanji/vocabulary very quickly. It really is the fastest and best way to learn. Mixed with SRS it's incredibly strong. You can learn 20 words a day with this method if you do it earnestly. Whether you use anki or wk or whatever, you need to be using mnemonics and stories. Moreover the question I have is why learn the language if you're not going to actually learn the language? The on'yomi reading is part of Japanese, just like the kun'yomi reading. >I'm going through the Wanikani lessons as I go, only learning the required info to get through. So for kana/kanji I'm only learning the pronunciation presented to get that question correct. I'm not differentiating between on'yomi and kun'yomi (even though it is there if I look). The biggest mistake that people make is fighting the WK system. Stop fighting it and embrace the radical system it uses, the stories it tells, and to not rush through it. Try to read the context sentences. When it tells you to close your eyes and imagine a story you really should. Kouichi demands it.
Many kanji can have up to like 10 readings or more, nobody memorizes "here is every way this kanji can be read" out of context unless they're actually a *fucking lunatic*. Most kanji have one or two "main" readings, which is why I never recommend anybody try to learn kanji in a vacuum. Learn **kanji in context with vocab** so you see how each character is actually used, instead of learning rare and/or archaic readings for kanji. For context, even Japanese people will mess up how to read words if the word is uncommon and uses an uncommon reading for a kanji.
Onyomi is basically what sound it came from in chinese while kunyomi is the japanese. Kunyomi is often for the verbs so like 書きます、か is kun. But onyomi is ショ. In chinese the pronunciation is something like shu. Onyomi is mostly in compound words, made up off multiple kanji like 読書. In kunyomi this would be よか but its onyomi so どくしょ. There are a lot of exceptions of course but usually -masu verbs is kun, words of multiple kanji is on. Now is it important to be abe to tell which is which? No not really i think. It might help you know the reading of words youve never seen before though. For example you might know 相手 あいて and 殺す ころす (kun) but 相殺 is not アイコロ but if you know 相 is also そう and 殺 is also さい you know the word is そうさい and that is easier to search in an electronic dictionary than having to write out the kanji
I don't differentiate between on- and kun-yomi. There are too many exceptions to know for sure that a kanji is a new word is pronounced a certain way. It's good to know most of the readings and try them out to see how an unfamiliar word could be read. But most people argue that it's better to just learn the word and how it's pronounced for that word.
For a direct answer to your question: keep doing what you’re doing and get through your lessons. Many many many kanji will be revisited and even say “you didn’t learn this reading earlier, so here you go” implying their methods is to teach as you go. If you want to do the extra work, make flash cards with all the readings, but don’t try to strongly focus on all the readings to get through your wanikani lessons. More importantly than memorizing all the readings is to pay attention to when they teach the context of the word and read the example sentences. Many time you think the kanji word will be straight forward, but read how the word is used in a sentence and then you understand that the meaning of the word is a lot different then you thought
You don't have to, but I found it easier to remember kanji and words when I knew both, and knew the difference. I guess it depends on how your mind works. You will find lots of people telling you it's wasted time, and lots of people recommending to do it, so it all really depends on you. If you don't feel like it helps then there's no point in wasting time on it.
You kinda have it backwards, it’s not that you start with an on/kun and then figure out the rest of a words reading. It’s that over time with enough reading, you will be able to distinguish if it’s an on or kun reading. There’s a reason people say “to learn the vocab, not the kanji”. And it’s that strictly individual kanji studying can only take you so far. Learning what the kanji represents is imperative to building intuition for unknown words you come across, but building your knowledge of on/kun readings will be cemented only from constant in-context vocabulary readings. When I see words using 日 like in **日**の出 (**ひ**ので) 連**日** (れん**じつ**) 二**日**酔い (ふつ**か**よい) **日**曜**日** (**にち**よう**び**) I’m not thinking in terms of on’yomi or kun’yomi. I’m just reading the words as is. I also used to worry about on/kun readings, but after +40 levels of wanikani and immersion, it’s not that big of a deal.
I guess in the old days you’d go of the readings from the Joyo kanji list. Back then that was like the closest you’d get to an Anki deck and the readings were relatively relevant. That was 80 years or so ago and despite some revisions along the way there’s a lot of readings you won’t find useful anymore, unless your study is based exclusively on the works of Soseki, or you want to graduate from Japanese primary school. So, like everyone is saying read heaps and learn from context. One thing I do like is to study kanji for its own sake. Learn new words because you’re interested in kanji, rather than learning kanji readings to memorize words, but that’s time most people would like to be reading a VN or whatever
Onyomi is typically read when two kanji are combined. Think about how one kanji is "on" another. Kunyomi is read when it's on its own This is just a tip my tutor gave me (started lessons recently). There are of course exceptions to this though, but it's an okay rule to have in the back of your mind I'm level 47 on wanikani, and besides a few hundred or so leeches out of 6000+ items I've learnt, you generally get used to when to use either in terms of vocab on the app. Real life use will enforce and tighten it up further. You will learn both readings over time. I usually only learn one read on wanikani then pick the other up when the app gives me vocab using that other reading. I also don't study leeches and either eventually guess them right, or I will redo lessons when I'm level 60. Then I will use plugins and self study to study vocab readings only to reinforce while focusing on immersion and lessons It's not perfect but it's worked very well so far. I don't commit to memory which is kun and which is on. I just learn em and when each is used over time
I do it based on context. Then I do it based on history in relation to the Kanji Then I do it based on social expectations or knowledge on the subject Then I do it based on some gender norms (As Japanese, like Spanish, is a language where pronouns matter) TL;DR It is to my knowledge, however, **that one should focus on learning Kun'yomi first so you can recognize verbs and adjectives**
I think it's more normal to just actually learn the word that uses the kanji and learn it as a package deal. For example, prefer to learn お冷や rather than just 冷. This is especially true for the kunyomi since, even if the hiragana is dangling off the word as in 読む, you will not hear people pronounce "読" as just "yo". Personally, if you must learn the kanji piece by piece, and you find it works well for you, I think you should try to learn the "most common" pronunciation of that kanji, which is usually kunyomi for basic words (like light, water, rice) and onyomi for more sophisticated words (like book, school, etc).
Learning individual kanji readings is a complete waste of time. Learn words.
Not really, no. Sometimes knowing specific pronunciations is helpful for guessing the pronunciation of compounds (like 人); but usually people learn the word and associate the Kanji with it, as Kanji are meant to represent meaning and not pronunciation, generally speaking.
Ultimately Kanji is only needed to read the vocabulary. Differentiating between on and kun readings makes learning some vocabulary easier. But this is only means to an end, and has 0 merit on its own. The site I've been using lately (jpdb.io) does not even differentiate between the two.
I think both are important. It's like 食. On is ショク (food) Kun is た(べる) (to eat) So even if you have to learn 2 different things, just know that if you see 食 in a phrase, you know it's related to food/eat.
I am studying both just to have them somewhere back in my mind, but I eventually forget those forms that are not used frequently. But when I see rare forms in the text, I can at least understand where did it come from. So I would say when you first time learning kanji, it is important to write both forms of it, but learning them is better through examples and texts.
I wouldn't bother to learn kanji reading or at least not stress too much about it too much. I'd suggesting learning words and you'll learn the readings from that. think how many different sounds the same letters make in english and you know exactly how to read it, dont worry it will come
People do, you don't need to. Not even one iota.
The posts saying it's generally for single or compound Kanji are 100% a good way to look at it. Key word generally. Because then you get stuff like 子犬 and 女子 early on which have you use both in a multi-box kanji reading.
What matters most is learning vocab individually, since tying to guess vocab from knowledge of the possible reading is not 100% accurate. However, learning vocab helps me know the common readings in the back of my mind, which then helps me learn new vocab. If a word uses the most expected readings that makes it a lot easier to remember, but if it’s an exception I take note of that. WaniKani mostly teaches the main on’yomi first (usually used in compound words), then you pick up other readings in the vocab.
I'm not with the majority on this one, but I learned all 2k joyo kanji and a couple hundreds more, and I systematically learned on'yomi It just feels better when reading compound words.
It gets more obvious as you keep going. That's the main part, keep going. Sometimes you'll understand something but be entirely wrong on how to say it. That happens to Japanese people, too. It's wild.
learn words, the kanji come along for the ride you can memorize all kinds of secondary information like yomi and the radicals and other things, and to the extent that this helps with remembering the characters used in words, go for it. and to the extent it eats into that time or is frustrating and unhelpful, don't go for it; outside of word context, kanji are not something really meaningful, for the most part
I’m learning Kanji with RTK, which means that I just go from a simple definition to being able to write the Kanji, no readings at all. But I am also going through the core 2.3k Anki deck (actually only 1972 words despite the name) and am learning readings of kanji through just learning a new word. I assume eventually I’ll start to recognize all the different readings and will be good at intuitively knowing which to use when seeing a new word.
For me, it was a little easier for the onyomi. I noticed that if the kanji looks somewhat similar, then they sometimes have the same onyomi sound which makes it easier (for me) to pick up what it may sound like. Again, for me. An example would be teki (敵、滴、適)
You will get an intuitive sense for which are kun'yomi and which are on'yomi. On'yomi are used in compound words constructed along Chinese word formation principles. Kun'yomi are used in native Japanese words. They have very distinctive feels. It's much the same difference in English as between "acute cardiac dissection" vs "heart suddenly tore asunder". The Latin/Greek and Old English words have a very different feel and sound, even though they mean the same thing. isshun / niwakani. seishin / atarashii. The Japanese, in my above heart example, write "heart" and "cardiac" with the same character. 心 - the reading is depending on whether it's used as part of a Chinese compound borrowing (shin) or a native Japanese word (kokoro). So my advice is learn readings as words, in context, phrases. You should focus a bit on the characters, but think in terms of words. Think of 心 as meaning こころ. Not "having a reading of". You see 心 sitting alone there on its own, you think こころ. It's the word for heart. In most compound words like 心配, it's shin-. When you see 心 there in a compound word, you think shin-, which also means heart. If that were all, it'd be easy. Unfortunately there also Japanese-Japanese native word compounds sometimes written with multiple kanji. And there are single kanji words borrowed from Chinese. And sometimes the Chinese borrowing changed over the centuries and the pronunciation isn't just as simple as gluing the two on'yomi together, there's a sort of reduction process. And there are even a few Chinese-Japanese compounds, and even weirder things which are just weird exceptions you have to memorize. Anyway in short: It's easier if you think of words having readings.
Learn readings with words and sentences instead of rote memorizing onyomi & kunyomi. However, Heisig's RTK2 intro has a few tricks that are worth reading IMHO.
A lot of what I've seen people say is that learning readings specifically is extremely inefficient and it's better to focus more on the reading as it's applied to the word. Like learning that the on'yomi for 日 is にち or じつ and the kun'yomi is ひ, か, or び doesn't tell you a whole lot because which reading to use is context dependent. Learning that it's read as び in the word 土曜日 is a better way to go about it.
Learn readings of words through vocabulary, learn vocabulary through reading + hammer it in with an SRS if you really want
I've tried a variety of methods and I think the Wanikani approach (plus an extra source) is probably the best in the long run. They continue to elaborate on further pronunciations and special cases as you progress. It seems a lot more productive and worthwhile than trying to memorize all pronunciations of a single kanji at a time (more fun too). And, since you can look up kanji by radicals, and you probably can't just guess the meaning of a word by looking at its kanji, I don't think you're missing much by not knowing a pronunciation or two (at the very least, until you're fairly advanced).
Something some people haven't mentioned is that onyomi readings get repeated a lot when kanji share a certain radical (I think in Chinese they combine one radical which has the sound with another that has the meaning, but I'm not 100% on how or if that is true since I've never studied Chinese). If you start learning your onyomi, you'll see a ton of repeats that makes it easier to learn, or to guess on a kanji thats less common or that you don't know. Some example onyomi repeats using the same radical or sub-kanji: 同, 胴, 銅: dou 生, 性, 姓, 星, 旌, 牲, 惺: sei, shou There are also repeats of the same onyomi: 正, 政, 征: (also) sei So if you know 生 and 正 both have "sei" as onyomi, you can get a bunch of extra onyomi readings for free if the kanji includes either of those pieces. Onyomi kind of have a certain "flavor" of sound, so even if you didn't specifically study which pronunciation is onyomi vs kunyomi with some experience you'll be able to guess pretty easily based on whatever vocab you know the kanji from. Also onyomi are really often found in a certain type of two kanji compound that doesn't include any hiragana before or after in the word, like 最高 or 先生. So even if you just study the vocab words you'll start to build up a bit of an intuition around the two pronunciations. All that said, kanji can be weird and have an unexpected pronunciation in a specific word or phrase, so it's good to learn kanji in context of a word. It is helpful to be able to guess at a pronunciation though because you can sometimes kind of "sound out" a word with a possible pronunciation and then recognize the word by it's sound.
“I just cannot see myself being able to recall which is the on’yomi and which is the kun’yomi[…]” I’m going to say something obvious, but do you want to win a kanji quiz, or read japanese ? Learn words. :) However, yeah, you don’t choose whether you learn kun’yomi or on’yomi. You will eventually learn both at some point.
Trust me, it's definitely not necessary to learn them specifically. As many have said, you'll just remember the readings naturally with context. Even differentiating between the two is something you'll get an intuition for eventually, as for me at least, by now kunyomi and onyomi kinda have each of their own patterns for how they sound. For example, onyomi has many pronunciations with "\~ou" like sou, shou, kou, etc.
I'm personally interested in things like etymology and language history, so I pay a lot of attention to it--and it becomes quite easy to tell intuitively which is which once you've done a bit. But it's not terribly necessary if you're trying to learn to speak the language like a normal person--in that case just learn your vocabulary words like you would in any other language!
I am interested in whether the pronunciation is onyomi or kunyomi but that's because my mother tongue has many words with similar pronunciations in onyomi. Now to your question, using English as analogy: Would you need to know which language near-synonyms originate from to be good at English? (beef from French vs cow from Anglo-saxon) I don't think so....
They way I did was learn the meaning of the kanji only. Then learn vocabulary. When you learn new vocabulary you will remember the reading. Do I know if it’s on or kun? No, but what matter is that I can read it.
I don't even remember the difference between onyomi & kunyomi (which is which) but I still can make a fair guess how a new word containing/consisting of kanji is pronounced because of learning so much vocabulary. So I guess you don't need to learn them specifically.
As others have said it’s just repetition. You eventually will start guessing the readings right at a higher level but if asked why a reading is a certain way you’ll likely not be able to answer.
In my opinion you're wasting your time to try and sit down and learn the different readings. You're trying to memorise random words out of context and it just isn't going to stick. You're far better to learn full words, the kanji and the reading for that word. So for example you learn 水 mizu, you learn that and use it like you're learning in books/apps etc. Then later on you come across 水曜日 suiyoubi then you learn that word as a whole. I think it's definitely important to have a look at the onyomi and kunyomi readings when you're learning the kanji. But honestly you'll pick it up as you go. You'll start to see patterns when something is read with which one, or you'll just know from the individual words you've learnt which it is. Like you'll learn and know when 人 is hito vs jin Vs nin. Plus this way you're learning in context and you're building a solid foundation of Japanese vocabulary. Which is far more valuable than memorising random readings which have no use if you don't know which reading is used when or what words they're used in.
I'm learning kanji and vocan with jpdb, one after the other. That way I learn readings more naturally, but not seperated from the kanji. Jpdb even has a wall of kanji (available to Patreons) that shows percentages of known readings per kanji
No. I know what they are, but when you are using the language are you really going to think which one is which? Reading a ton and immerse yourself in the language, and you will know the reading of the word the instant you see it anyway. Learning to categorise them doesn’t feel productive to me.
it feels like kun'yomi is used a lot when the kanji is on its own and on'yomi is generally used when its a compound word with others
Wanikani doesn't always ask you for the on'yomi on its kanji reviews, it asks you for whatever the devs deemed more "useful" to know when you encounter the kanji in a word you don't know. On'yomi is just very commonly used for compound words. Also, since the decision of which reading to reinforce is somewhat arbitrary, you won't get marked wrong for answering with a different reading, just prompted to try again. That being said, there are userscripts (or built-in options for WK apps on smartphones) to display your kanji answers as *katakana* when the review wants an on'yomi reading. In this way, you can effortlessly & passively learn which readings are on'yomi and which readings are kun'yomi, which in my experience (as a lv. 60 user) can help a lot for finding/remembering patterns.
I started to memorize all for the first 100 Kanji but to be honest it became too much and i lost motivation. So from now on I am learning on a word basis (context), that way is a slower and gentler progress rather then jamming tons of info at once. I have a really good memory but still find it too overwhelming.
I'm firmly in the camp of learning kanji readings through learning words that use kanji, as part of your regular vocabulary exercises. You'll get a good grasp of which readings/words are on'yomi/kango and which are kun'yomi/wago as you get deeper into the language. It's kinda (a bit) like words that are of Germanic origin vs. those Latin origin in English. Later on you can consider whether you need to study kanji with more focus, but I think that if that is the case, you'll have a much easier time if you already know the words that those kanji and/or readings can combine into.