I am only just now familiarising myself with some kanji. At the beginning I thought that each “whole” character had a set pronunciation. Like 人 has been pronounced じん everywhere so far.
Thus, having learned “China” recently I thought that 中 was pronounced ちゅう and that 国 was ごく.
However with 中村 the 中 is pronounced as なか.
Why is that? Is it simply an exception or are Kanji characters always pronounced differently depending on what’s next to them?
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In short, Chinese characters were borrowed both for their Chinese sound (many of them at multiple times from different Chinese languages) and for their meaning in a native Japanese word – so it’s not uncommon for a single character to get 3 different readings. In this case ちゅう is a Chinese sound based reading (called an on’yomi) and なか is a native meaning based reading (kun’yomi). There are some patterns you’ll pick up on (like usually on’yomi and kun’yomi don’t mix), but especially at first it’s going to just require memorizing which reading to use in context. It sounds really hard (and it can be) but remember that we read 1 differently in 1st, 10, and 11 without much difficulty, so it’s completely doable!
I wish it was an exception lol Yeah they all have multiple readings depending on what word they are a part of. They have a general meaning like “person” but pronunciation and spelling changes according to the word they are in.
Most kanji have multiple pronunciations. You’ll get a feel for it over time. 人 is also ひと (or びと) on it’s own or in 男の人, 恋人, etc.
If you want more detail, broadly there’s two groups of pronunciations. くんよみ are pre-existing Japanese words that started to be written with Chinese characters. おんよみ are Chinese roots that were changed a bit to fit Japanese phonetics. There’s a lot of writing online if you search for onyomi and kunyomi so I won’t repeat that. Just some encouragement that your brain will eventually start to get the patterns subconsciously that you can usually have a good guess which reading is used even if you haven’t seen the word before.
In English, same letter can sound differently in different words right?
Kanji works similar. In different words, the same kanji can be pronounced differently.
This is one of the reasons people say it’s hard, not because it’s hard to recognize 2000 symbols, but because every word is gonna dictate how those are read.
Welcome to the pain.
As for your example with 人. It is read as…
ひと in 人 (ひと)
じん in 外国人 (がいこくじん)
り in 一人 (ひとり)
にん in 人間 (にんげん)
うと in 玄人 (くろうと)
うど in 仲人 (なこうど)
I’m sure there’s a few more.
Haha have fun with 人 once you discover it is not always じn 😂. And 国 usually ends up being read as こく instead of ごく.
I used to get so annoyed at the different readings but it became easier when I just memorized each word and used the different possible readings to jog my memory. But there are definitely patterns that you will notice as you learn more.
Take a look at the reading for 生
Note: This is a response I made to someone asking how kanji worked a little while ago. I think it might help you a little bit as well.
Learning vocabulary with the kanji you’re learning is the best method I’ve found for learning. There’s two pronunciation for Kanji: On-yomi and Kun-yomi. On-yomi is the original sound the character had when it was carried over from Chinese, although it’s better to say that it’s the Japanese person’s best attempt at replicating it. Kun-yomi is the pronunciation attached to a character to represent already existing words from Japanese.
Here’s some general rules to pronunciation. About 95% of the time when you see a compound (two or more kanji characters that make up a word), it’ll use the On-yomi pronunciation of those characters. Kun-yomi pronunciations of compounds are a thing too, which is why I said about 95% of the time. An example is “firework” 花火(はなび), which uses the Kun-yomi for “flower” はな, and the Kun-yomi for “fire” ひ. The び comes from euphony, adding dakuten to the ひ character, which makes it an easier to pronounce word. This happens a lot in Japanese. A more straightforward example could be 水玉(みずたま), meaning “water droplet.” It uses the Kun-yomi for “water” みず, and the Kun-yomi for “ball” たま. The only way to know when a compound is using the Kun-yomi rather than the On-yomi is just to memorize the word. Sometimes characters don’t have a Kun-yomi pronunciation, meaning you obviously can only use its On-yomi. For example, the word “King,” is 王(おう), and is only pronounced that way.
Kun-yomi is used when you see a character all by itself to represent a word(there are rare exceptions when the On-yomi is preferred like in 本(ほん) and 門(もん)), meaning it’s not a compound. An example could be 犬(いぬ) meaning “dog.” Okurigana is another big indicator that Kun-yomi is being used. Okurigana is when hiragana characters are part of a word with kanji. This is common for verbs and adjectives, but it can happen with other words too. A quick example is 見る(みる), the verb meaning “to look.” The On-yomi is けん and the Kun-yomi is み, so now you know which one is best to use. The amount of Okurigana or which characters being used can help you decipher what pronunciation to use if there’s more than one. For example 入る(はいる) meaning “to go in,” compared to 入れる(いれる) meaning “to put in.”
The final thing is Ateji, which is when the pronunciation doesn’t coincide with the On-yomi or Kun-yomi at all. An example is 明日(あした), meaning “tomorrow.” It uses the character “bright” with the On-yomi めい and the Kun-yomi あか, with the character for “sun” or “day” having the On-yomi にち and じつ and the Kun-yomi ひ. As you can see, none of those match with the pronunciation. It seems the word already existed and the ancient Japanese writer just decided “Screw the rules, I’m writing it like this!”
Hopefully this helped a little. Kanji is pretty complicated, but with a little practice you’ll have it down in no time.
He he – just take look at this little rascal [生 – it has 13 readings](https://jisho.org/search/%E7%94%9F%20%23kanji).