How do you when to use the secondary readings of the on form and kun form of a kanji?

6 comments

1. The unfortunate answer is that it varies from word to word, and there’s not any way, as far as I know, to tell other than just knowing the word. That’s why, instead of trying to memorize a kanji and all of its readings, it can be easier to just go straight to learning words. Of course, knowing kanji well can help with learning words, but I personally found it difficult to memorize all the possible readings for each kanji, especially when they had a whole bunch. And the fact that the readings were just arbitrary pronunciations made it even harder.

   So instead of memorizing that 月 the kanji can be read as つき, げつ, or がつ, I find it easier to just remember that “moon” is 「つき」, written 「月」, “Monday” is 「げつようび」, written 「月曜日」, and “April” is 「しがつ」, written 「四月」. It may seem like it would take longer, but you do end up picking up the kanji readings as well, and, at least for me, it is way easier to remember.

2. You know because you know the word it’s in. In 正月, the 月 is がつ because it is. In 歳月, the 月 is げつ because it is. That’s all there is to it–you learn the word, and then you know how it is in that word.

   You have them backward, by the way: がつ and げつ are on’yomi of 月, and き and こ are kun’yomi of 木.

   Also, I’m curious about one thing. You say this:

   >I know when to use on form and kun form

   But what do you mean by this? What is your sense of when to use them?

   ​

   EDIT: Sometimes one reading is significantly more common than another. For instance, in the case of 月, げつ is the “normal” on’yomi that you’ll encounter in the vast majority of cases, while がつ is really just confined to the names of the months and a couple other very closely month-related words. The trouble is that what few of them exist are quite common, so they end up seeming more evenly weighted than they are. The thing is though, knowing that will help you with 月, but doesn’t extend to any other character, each of which has its own special story!

3. You don’t know actually. You have to get used to their different readings while you discover different words using the same kanji.

   As always, all what you need is practice!

4. You don’t. You just know it on a case by case basis.

5. Remember that spoken language exists before written language, and that Japanese didnt have a written language before kanji. Shoehorning in these characters as representations of their pre-existing words leads to the same characters having many different ‘readings’. The kanji should convey meaning and you can remember the word the kanji are trying to represent. The patterns you see in ‘readings’ will come with experience naturally, due to kanji being phonosemantic.

6. Muhahahah! Welcome to Kanji Hell where
   月極 is つきぎめ and not げっきょく, where
   通行止 is つうこうどめ and not つうこうし, where 経緯 is usually けいい and not いきさつ like the dictionary will have you believe! Muhahaha!