I mean for Kanji that have the same sound, is it like with English and you have words that sound the same but it depends on the context. For example, orange is a fruit and also a color so for Japanese if you have a Kanji with the same readings is it the context that is important?
My apologies if this is a question with a obvious answer and I wanted to make sure.
3 comments
In spoken language context is important yes. There are a lot of homophones in Japanese so you know what the person is talking about by context.
Kanji however are rarely ambiguous like that. Kanji can have more than one meaning, but it’s usually fairly clear even outside of context.
When you write with Kanji, it’s what you mean that is important.
For example how do you write ame in Kanji ? It can be 雨 or 飴. The first is rain, the second candy, so it’s not really the context, but what you want to say that is important.
In English it would be the same a to ask if you decide to write night or knight based on the context. The answer is likely that it’s not really the context that matter, but what you mean.
The context would be much more important when you speak, here you can make the difference between homophones either because of the context or the pitch accent.
Pitch accent also helps distinguish a lot of minimal pairs, 橋 and 箸, 紙 and 神 etc.