This is something i never get used to. first of all, 掛ける, 懸ける can in itself be used in many different ways and contexts, beyond that theres a couple of other kakerus, plus some intransitive versions that sounds similar
欠ける, chip, to be chipped, break off, missing, lacking駆ける, run dash race賭ける, to bet, to risk, to stake
and probably some i missed. And often some or all of these could be written in hiragana(?) at least when spoken cant be told apart.
How the hell to navigate in this kakeru djungel? Is there some clever rule’s of thumb or summaries on how to tell them apart and which one is the likely one being used?
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> How the hell to navigate in this kakeru djungel?
The same way you figure out that “I hit the ball with my bat” is not talking about the animal “bat” in English. Obviously Japanese has more of these, but the logic is pretty much the same. You just see these expressions used a billion times in natural sentences and the meaning becomes obvious.
There’s a cute kids song called かける かける with different kinds of かける. Maybe you can find it on YouTube.
context. there are tons of homophones in japanese, it’s even worse than english because the language has less unique sounds and thus more chance for words of a given length to overlap with each other.
there are also homoglyphs, words with same kanji but different pronunciations. 大人気≠大人気 because だいにんき≠おとなげ. or more commonly 開く≠開く (あく≠ひらく) or 行った≠行った (いった≠おこなった). you just have to learn by context.
think about the english word run.
you can run a race, run in an election, run a business, run a program, run a story (as a magazine), run out of time, run drugs, run a car on a fuel, run somebody out of town, live in a run down house, have a runny nose, run a red light, have the runs, be given the run of something (e.g. a house), score a run, own a chicken run, ski down a ski run, have a run of bad luck, etc.
how do you know all these usages? mostly down to repetition and just exposure to each meaning. just expose yourself to one or two uses of the word at a time and eventually repetition will do the trick
There’s a short story I read by Tawada Yoko called Kakeru. The entire story is written using the verb kakeru. Its very short and a simply written story, so you might get a kick from reading it.