I have been learning Japanese for a little while now, but I have just picked up learning kanji. And I have gotten confused about the pronunciation. My main question is does each pronunciation for a kanji correlate to a different meaning? Also, do both Onyomi and Kunyomi get used in Japanese?
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Both on and kun readings are frequently used. Some readings are their own words, but a good chunk (if not the majority) of readings cannot be used by themselves. This is why you’re advised to learn words primarily over individual kanji.
There’s no hard and fast rules here, but there are some patterns that can help you to guess a reading. See [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/) for more details.
Personally, I’d advise you to just learn vocabulary with kanji in them – you’ll get the readings from there in their natural environment.
Kanji don’t have pronunciations and their meanings are vague and don’t always translate to part of the word they’re in. Yes there are onyomi and kunyomi but when you categorize pronunciation patterns, it’s always looking backwards. You learn a new word, you learn it’s proper spelling with kanji, and then you learn what pattern the characters happen to follow in the word. However the WORD is always the base unit of reading. Never at any point do you decide how to pronounce a kanji character, you always pronounce a word.
Just like in English, how do you know how to pronounce lead vs lead ?
The lead fisherman put a lead weight on their line.
The characters alone didn’t say what the word meant or how to pronounce the word.
So by all means take note of patterns in pronunciation. However vocab is always first. Pronunciations are tied to a word not a character. The reason is because words were created, or imported from China, over thousands of years, and retain their approximate original pronunciation, which changed over literally millennia.
There is no difference in meaning between On’yomi and Kun’yomi. However, there is a difference in usage. They are both used.
A general rule of thumb, is that when a Kanji is used in a compound, the On’yomi will be used. And when it’s *not* in a compound, it will be the Kun’yom. However, this isn’t *always* true, so have caution.
For example, the word 目次 (= table of contents). The reading is もくじ. The On’yomi of 目 is もく and the On’yomi of 次 is じ. However, when these characters are *not* in a compound they are read as め and つぎ respectively.
Meanings are usually the consistent part. 人 is always a person, 力 is always power, that’s why even though 人力 is read ‘jinriki’ and not ‘hitochikara’, you can tell regardless of reading that it has something to do with ‘man power’ (although not in the sense of ‘manpower’. 人力 is most commonly seen in the compound 人力車 which means…[rickshaw](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E4%BA%BA%E5%8A%9B%E8%BB%8A%E3%80%80%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E&t=ffab&ia=web). Or ‘man powered cart’)
Onyomi and kunyomi both get used. I’m not sure why you’d think they wouldn’t. Onyomi is mostly used in compounds and borrows its readings from Chinese, while kunyomi is more common in isolation and as part of a conjugation, and is the result of overlaying Chinese characters onto native Japanese.
We have a similar thing in English; most of our longer words (and indeed most of our words in general) are French or Latin, most of our grammar and shorter words are Germanic (from Old English). As a result, we often have a lot of meaning couplets, and what usually happens is that the shorter, more ‘vulgar’ part of the couplet is from Old(er) English, while the longer, ‘sophisticated’ word is a loan word.