I had a conversation with a Japanese guy and we talked about the mountain (やま)
And then i asked him when is it appropriate to use the on-yomi which is さん. He told me that さん doesn’t mean mountain. But the resources i use to learn they mention it as San. When do i use the kun-yomi and when the on-yomi? Do i have to learn both?
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Learn the different readings with vocabulary.
生 has loads of different readings.
Remember it like this:
The word for mountain is 山 – やま
The word for mount fuji 富士山 – ふじさん
onyomi and kunyomi doesnt matter if you are not taking the JLPT
On’yomi is usually used with other on’yomi kanji in compound words
Kun-yomi is used when the kanji is used WITHOUT other kanji, for example in most adjectives/verbs and nouns with only one kanji.
On-yomi is used when the kanji is used with one or more other kanji, i.e. mostly compound nouns and occasionally in adjectives/verbs such as 鬱陶しい
When he said “さん doesn’t mean mountain”, he didn’t mean “山 is never read as さん” or “さん has nothing to do with mountains”. Because さん (as a reading of 山) is definitely, like, mountain-related. But it’s typically used in some kind of compound, like with the name of the mountain or another onyomi kanji; so thinking of it as “a/the word for mountain” is not quite right.
If I had to guess, I might imagine that what he meant could be something like, “やま is what I think of as the word that ‘means mountain’, because that’s the word that you say when you just want to say ‘mountain’. Using さん that way would make no sense.” But I hope someone more experienced than me could provide better input.
Honestly, in my learning, I’ve found that memorizing the kun-yomi and on-yomi reading for each kanji hasn’t been too useful. Memorizing vocabulary and their associated kanji has been far more useful.
For example, don’t worry about the many different ways the kanji 日 *can* be read.
Instead, just remember that 日 is ひ, 曜日 is ようび, 日本 is にほん, etc. I mean hell, in 日曜日 the kanji appears twice and is read 2 different ways in a single word.
You’ll start recognizing strings of kanji, their meaning, and their reading instantly the more you see them. Exactly the same as you see a string of letters and you instantly know the word in English. You don’t have to consider the pronunciation of each individual letter.
That’s just been my experience. Knowing the different readings is certainly good for when you come across a new word. Maybe you know the readings of the kanji so you can reasonably guess the reading of the word. But in that situation, you’re probably going to look up the meaning/reading anyways, right?
Short answer: yes. If you want to become fluent in reading Japanese you will need to learn both readings.
Longer answer: kanji are units of the written language. Almost any generalisation about them has exceptions. For example:
Most of the time you can say of any particular kanji that it has a particular reading in a particular context, but not always. Eg the kanji 行 has the reading い in 行く, the reading おこな in 行う and the reading こう in 旅行 but in the word 流行る (はやる) it the two kanji unit is usually treated as having the reading はや rather than each kanji having one reading. This happens sometimes.
Kanji may, or may not, have either onyomi or kunyomi and may have single or multiple of either. As a very rough general rule onyomi often appear in compound words and kunyomi as single kanji (with extra kana – called okurigana – as in 行く above). Etc etc.
Kanji may also be associated with one or more meanings but as with readings there are plenty of oddities (look up “ateji” for more on a particular class of oddity).
The moral of all this is that most of us find situations (and Japanese people tell me they sometimes also find this) where we (i) know the meaning but not how to pronounce something; or (ii) know how to pronounce something but not what it means; or (iii) neither. That in turn is why you end up learning **whole words**.
English can be like this too of course, just not quite to the same degree.
The mountain I can see out of my window is called 十瓶山 . When my (Japanese) friend and I first came here we saw signs for it but had no idea how to read it. You could imagine it starting じゅうびん but in fact it is とかめやま. “10 bottle mountain”.
Of course that’s a name, and names are a whole different ball game. For example, there is a very rare surname that is written 一 read にのまえ (because one is the number before two).
Learn vocabulary, not readings.