Learning on’yomi and kun’yomi

13 comments

1. I’m still learning myself but maybe I can give you some tips. I’ve been doing some research and I’ve found that you’ll only use the On reading when the kanji is next to a kanji but kun reading when it’s next to hiragana. That’s just how I’m reading the kanji but I know someone out there can actually give a deeper explanation for the both of us

2. remembering both readings just by memorization of the kanji is quite tedious.

   In my opinion its better to learn words with the kanji, because as you learn more words you grasp more readings and are remembering “Ahh in word X its read as Y”, learning multiple readings for 2k kanjis does not only take a lot of time, but its also easy to get burnt out by that(you also only learn the readings and no new words).

   Im courious, what “level” are you right now if youre reading stuff without furigana? If youre capable of reading no furigana stuff already then your current methods are already working great.

3. read more and learn vocab

4. Dont bother spending time practicing their readings (unless you have a specific goal in mind). Learning vocab along with the kanji will make you instinctively know which reading to use when you see a new word.

5. 生 and 上　would take a long time to remember all the readings.

6. I really like wanikani for this, it introduces vocab words along with the kanji and also gives you mnemonics to help remember the readings as well as meaning.

   It is a paid service but people have made free anki decks from all their material so you can also go that route.

7. You learn kun and on with vocab, not with isolate kanji.

8. I’d personally say you don’t really need to memorize all the onyomi and kunyomi for kanji. I just recently started learning the various readings for new Kanji, but before I got to where I am (only about 500 known kanji) I just learned Kanji in the context of the words that they appear in.

   I started learning on yomi and kun yomi because, well first, I’m only learning 8 kanji a day right now, so learning the different readings isn’t that much of a time sink. 2nd, I’ve found that learning the readings helps me greatly with getting the correct reading when I try to learn a new word with the same kanji from another word. Also, when I find an unknown kanji “in the wild” it’s easier to look it up if I know the reading, but the readings can often be wrong because there are so many. There are methods to the madness though and you learn them overtime.

   I do it by just writing down the kanji with every different reading, which would probably take too much time for some people. I also put every kanji on its own on an anki card and the first time the card comes up for review, I write the kanji with every reading in furigana, and then write several words with it.

   It does help imo, but I don’t think the time sink and effort is worth the result. It has greatly increased my my ability to correctly retain readings though.

9. I’ll throw another one on the “don’t bother” pile. You don’t need to know the readings in a vacuum. You’ll pick it up as you learn words. I only ever make a special effort to know them if I’m consistently forgetting how to say a word that contains one.

10. The solution for me has been simple: learn more vocab. The more words you know composed of a certain kanji, the easier it will be to remember the readings of said kanji. I recommend reading a lot combined with a moderate amount of Anki.

11. Better to learn words and how to write them, rather than a list of readings. The latter is the way Japanese kids learn them, but they don’t also need to learn the basic vocabulary to apply them to. As L2 learners we’re better off learning both at the same time.

12. I like how [JPDB.io](https://JPDB.io) works for kanji learning: You only need to memorize/learn a kanji<->keyword relationship, 0 readings, and that “unlocks” vocabulary SRS cards. So to learn 大きい you first learn 大 ~=~ large in a card, and then a separate card can be added for 大きい. I just use the keyword kanji cards to teach myself to kind of recognize the overall shape, and to differentiate it from other kanji, and only when learning vocabulary do I learn readings (And the keyword *sometimes* helps with the vocab, i.e if you can easily learn おおきい=big, and know big=大, it might help learn 大きい=おおきい).

    Notes: By default it uses kanji in front and keyword in the back, I flipped it in settings to keyword->kanji, and for those so inclined you can entirely disable kanji cards in it.

13. read words not characters. never at any point do you need to decide whether a character is kunyomi or onyomi. words’ pronunciations and meanings can differ depending on context even if they have the same exact kanji.