Hi everybody, I didn’t really know where else to go except for here since the issue I’m having seems to be a roadblock in my understanding of compounds. I know the short answer is, “Well, sometimes it’s just like that” Which I do understand. I just seem to have something in the way I can’t put my finger on that’s mentally holding me back.
To sum it up as quickly as possible, I’ve recently gotten into kanji, maybe 3 weeks ago. My speaking, listening and grammar is what I could realistically say at the upper levels of N5 to low N4. I hate using the test levels as a barometer, but that’s all I’ve got right now. However, I seem to be having a really hard time grasping *something* about compounds. I’ll give you an example:
出口. I *know* this is read as でぐち because I was shown. But if it weren’t for me being shown, my mind would read it as しゅつぐち or だぐち. I was under the impression that compounds are almost always read with the on’yomi. Right now, because I can’t get over this weird, ethereal thing in the way, I’m finding myself getting sort of frustrated and down on myself because I’m unsure of what to do at this point or how to correct my problem. I guess I just came to see if anyone else experienced this and what they did to get past it. Anyway, thanks in advance.
4 comments
On’yomi and kun’yomi are patterns and tools. Keeping them in mind will help you learn words more quickly. But, you still have to *learn words*, for this reason and others.
If it were onyomi it would be しゅっこう.
And yes, it is just like the sometimes.
Honestly, in the beginner stages I don’t think it’s worth worrying about onyomi and kunyomi at all. It adds too much stuff to remember and too much stress. Some people never bother with learning the readings. I only recently started (only to see if it’s worth it) and I’m probably upper N3.
My advice would be just learn the vocab and the reading for that specific vocab. Don’t worry too much about individual Kanji readings.
Hmm. OP, I don’t want to put words to your feelings for you, but, reading your last paragraph, it comes across as the anxiety about this *being* the problem. You don’t explicitly put your finger on the issue, other than the feeling of uncertainty that comes from your expectation about readings being contradicted. You learnt to spell English, and you got over the fact that Greco-Latin and French loanwords often completely ignore the more basic rules of pronunciation for words of Germanic origin.
As to how to fix it, it is to learn words, to read/listen/etc. and see them in context. As well as kunyomi vs. onyomi, you will have to deal with names using the same characters being different, and word-play that shows you the kanji for some other word(s) and supplies a totally different word in furigana, amongst other stuff. This may all seem overwhelming and disconcerting but – it comes.
Kanji study is not the be-all, end-all. Many here don’t do it at all. I think there’s certainly merit to learning them; there’s a reason Japanese students learn them – chiefly, they come in handy for spelling queries (fex. you might want to clarify the kanji of someone’s name), for writing, for frantically guessing meanings when you can’t use a dictionary or ask someone (rare occurrence…), and finally (the most relevant for learners I think actually) it helps reduce ambiguity between very similar kanji.
Personally, I didn’t think any of those points were worth the trade-off of the time investment while starting to learn, and I think words teach you the readings in a passive manner, so I focused on reading/etc. first, and *then* started to learn individual kanji in the sense of learning them outside of their existence as words. Because I know how kanji are read in maybe 1 or 2 words, I could easily guess at readings. If I knew a word vocally, but not visually, I could often run through the different possibilities for a given sequence of two kanji say, and figure out the word, especially given I’d vaguely have an impression of their meaning; all this goes on subconsciously. Confusing two similarly written words happens less than you think, for example cases where the kanji going one way means one thing and another the other, eg 火花 and 花火. When it does, you tend to quickly realize from context that you have the wrong word and need to look at a dictionaryǃ
And this is exactly the way Japanese children learn. They know the words; kanji slowly get introduced in reading, and at the same time, they do drills for them. They won’t learn all the readings at once, rather they’ll learn the most relevant readings. A few more readings and more kanji will be introduced as they progress. They have to write them out to practice handwriting, proportionality, etc. Eventually, the task of figuring out readings will be left up to them, and it’s mostly expected that they will learn them by reading and writing.
Now, I don’t say you should switch your approach, if you’re learning kanji, rather I am saying – don’t worry about it too much. It’ll get easier with time.