Hiroko here. Learners of kanji are often confused about the usage of on-reading and kun-reading. Which should you use, and when? Do you know this kanji? But what about the Chinese reading? When a word is made up of just one kanji, the kun-reading is used. When a single word is made up of one kanji with hiragana like as in verbs or i-adjectives, the kun-reading is also used. As you continue to study, you'll find some exceptions to this rule, but stick to the general rule as you begin to study kanji.
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Please do not enter your email address there. April 19th, at PM. Pinned Comment. We wish you good luck with your language studies. Thank you. Just started kanji and 1st confusion I got is this. Keep up the good work and good luck reading more kanji! Hi Abdelmoumen, Thank you for studying with us! Let us know if you have any questions. Hi Carlos, Thank you for your comment!
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Enter E-Mail Address. Japan had their own language, and while it isn't the same as Japanese today , it wasn't Chinese either. They had their own words for things like water, fire, food, and all the other stuff that exists in life. Instead of converting the Japanese language into Chinese, they decided each kanji will have a Chinese way of reading it and a Japanese way of reading it. Notice how I said the on'yomi were derived from Chinese pronunciations?
The Japanese didn't bring over the Chinese pronunciation for kanji wholesale. Japanese is a very simple language in terms of the number of sounds available to it. The Chinese language has far more sounds than the Japanese language does. Things like distinct pitches can lead to a complete change of meaning. Thus, Japan had to convert these Chinese readings into something that could be said within the Japanese alphabet of sounds.
This, as well as Japan's lack of tones, is why they're sometimes similar, but not exactly the same as the originals. Thanks to this adoption of characters and readings, almost all kanji have at least one on'yomi Chinese origin and one kun'yomi Japanese origin reading.
So if you want to easily read Japanese you'll need to know them both. Here are some examples of kanji where both readings are commonly used:. Note: Sometimes you'll see on'yomi readings written in katakana or English, and kun'yomi readings written in hiragana.
This is a dictionary-only method used for differentiation. We won't be using them here. Multiply this by pretty much every other kanji. Sure, some kanji will have one reading that is way more useful than the others, but for the most part, there will be an on'yomi and kun'yomi reading worth learning.
I'm going to leave it at that for now, so we can look beyond "one on'yomi and one kun'yomi," because, unfortunately, kanji readings are not that simple. Although most kanji have both an on'yomi and kun'yomi reading, there are exceptions. There are kanji that only have one or the other. Remember these language transitions were happening way back in history and Japan was not yet the unified group of islands we know today.
They were fractured, unrelated groups with unique leaders and systems of government that happened to live together on a couple of big islands. Not only did they enjoy fighting among themselves, they also did not have the Internet. On the flip side, there are also kanji characters that only have kun'yomi readings because they are kanji created in Japan. So, you can't always assume a kanji will have two readings: an on'yomi and a kun'yomi.
Sometimes it's just one of them, for the reasons listed above. That makes it simpler for you, the kanji learner! Now that you know about Chinese and Japanese readings, everything should be cake right? Well, not exactly. Let's take a step back. We know kanji came over from China via Korea, but history spans a long, long time. And if you know anything about Chinese history or if you've played Dynasty Warriors , you know that the seat of power in China was pretty much constantly changing hands.
As an outsider, you probably think of these kingdoms as a bunch of "Chinese" people fighting each other while speaking the same "Chinese" language. China is big, there are many groups, many cultures, and — most importantly for this article — many languages. These language shifts had a direct effect on the types of Chinese language that were brought to Japan.
And not every kanji was brought over at the same time or from the same place. The character and the concept stayed the same, but for some reason Japan thought it would be neat to just adopt both Chinese readings for the same kanji. Can you guess which reading arrived in Japan later?
Hint: it's the reading used with subway systems. In pretty much every case, these characters and their readings were brought over by scholars of Buddhism and Confucianism in the form of religious and historical texts usually through scrolls. Japanese scholars would then copy and adapt those texts into their own writing. The majority of the on'yomi readings we use today are from the Kan-on group, though you'd never know it by looking at a dictionary.
In fact, most dictionaries make no mention of the origins of the on'yomi readings and simply list them all without any differentiation. If you ever see these three kanji in a dictionary or resource, now you know what they're talking about! Let's take a look at examples of kanji with multiple on'yomi readings, which, as you know now, are just readings from different Chinese language eras.
You can probably guess why: because they are the most recent additions to the Japanese language. I can almost guarantee you'll never be asked about which on'yomi reading is from when or where, but knowing why there are multiple readings can help alleviate the overall confusion that comes with learning kanji.
Just because kun'yomi readings originated in Japan, you may start out thinking there is only one kun'yomi per kanji, but it isn't that simple. There can be multiple kun'yomi readings for one kanji, just like there can be multiple on'yomi readings, but the reasons are slightly different. In Japan, before there was writing, spoken language still existed and words for similar concepts would be said different ways.
For example, if you ask someone about a bubbly beverage in different areas of the United States you'll get multiple names for it: soda, pop, coke, or cola are all acceptable answers though if we're being real, "soda" is the only correct one. Still, at the end of the day, everyone's describing the same tooth-rotting beverage. Here we explain the difference between on-reading and kun-reading of kanji characters. It's not the easiest concept to understand and is probably not something beginning students of Japanese need to worry about.
But if your goal is to become proficient or even fluent in Japanese, it will be important to understand the subtle differences between on-reading and kun-reading of some of the most used kanji characters in Japanese. Simply put, on-reading On-yomi is the Chinese reading of a kanji character.
It is based on the sound of the kanji character as pronounced by the Chinese at the time the character was introduced, and also from the area it was imported. So an on-reading of a given word might be quite different from modern standard Mandarin. The kun-reading Kun-yomi is the native Japanese reading associated with the meaning of a kanji.
Almost all kanji have On-readings except for most of the kanji that were developed in Japan e. Some dozen kanji don't have Kun-readings, but most kanji have multiple readings. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to explain when to use On-reading or Kun-reading. Those learning Japanese need to memorize how to correctly stress syllables and proper pronunciation on an individual basis, one word at a time. On-reading is usually used when the kanji is a part of a compound two or more kanji characters are placed side by site.
Kun-reading is used when the kanji is used on its own, either as a complete noun or as adjective stems and verb stems. This is not a hard and fast rule, but at least you can make a better guess. The on-reading for the character is "sui" and the Kun-reading is "mizu. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data.
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