TL;DR: Do kun’yomi and on’yomi function as synonyms with different use cases or as they unrelated to a given meaning of a kanji?
Apologies if this is a common question but from research online there’s a real difficulty finding the more nuanced posing of the question because there’s so many articles about why these readings exists, that aside.
I’m beginning to learn my first kanji but I’m try to understand the general principle when I’m confronted with a bunch of different readings as how they relate to a given meaning and a given Kanji.
Say you have a kanji with an on’yomi and kun’yomi. Do these pair in their meaning? Say 木 which has a kun’yomi as moku and on’yomi as ko. Do moku and ko both mean tree in the specific meaning of tree expressed by that Kanji, or can they have unrelated meanings (ignoring homophones).
What I’m trying to get is is generally given a kanji which has say N meanings does each meaning have a pair of kun’yomi and on’yomi so the Kanji has 2N distinct readings corresponding to N meanings OR does the Kanji have some meanings which lake on’yomi or kun’yomi or vice versa?
I’m grateful for any and all response and please don’t be afraid to cut through my stream of consciousness for some clarity. Thanks! 🙂
13 comments
>given a kanji which has say N meanings does each meaning have a pair of kun’yomi and on’yomi so the Kanji has 2N distinct readings corresponding to N meanings
>
> OR does the Kanji have some meanings which [lack] on’yomi or kun’yomi or vice versa?
The latter.
learn words
the readings generally have to do just with which word it is in
like, how do you pronounce the letters in English? It depends what word they are in. The letter “H” sounds different in different words.
but sometimes there is a coincidence that one word uses one reading and one word uses another reading, and if the kanji is used in very few words, then it could be that actually the readings do correspond to the meaning, but his is just some weird case
there is another case I saw a lot too with “single kanji” words. In this case, how you pronounce it actually *does* turn it into a different word usually (usually…). So in that case, the reading does correspond to the meaning, but only again, because it is a different word.
like this:
表 ひょう
表 おもて
ひょう means chart/table and おもて means surface/exterior. But they are the same character. So in this case the pronunciation corresponds to the different meaning, but that’s because ひょう and おもて are different *words*. Basically the pronunciation just is about what word it is in.
kanji aren’t words, learn words
the concept of “meaning” for a kanji is vague, there’s no such thing as what you’re describing
Let’s use some English examples. For instance, let’s imagine 🐎 is the “English kanji” for horse:
– 🐎.
– 🐎ry.
– 🐎ine.
– 🐎drome.
>!horse, cavalry, equine, hippodrome!<
All those words have the symbol of “horse” in different contexts, and are pronounced differently. As English speakers we are used to differentiate between them and use them in their proper context, but it’s not like you could use one pronunciation in another context, you don’t say “horsedrome”.
In Japanese it’s similar. Instead of learning kanji readings on their own, you should learn words that use them (that’s what Wanikani uses, for instance, you go from radicals to kanji to words). Of course, there are exceptions, but the general rule is that a word (a specific combination of kanji and kana) has one meaning, and one pronunciation.
This is absolutely a case where the best answer is ‘just keep going further’.
I started writing out an answer until I realised that it was getting excessively long only to explain something that you’ll inevitably realise just by continuing through the textbook. There’s no need to overcomplicate things this early on.
But as much of a TL;DR as I can give: Kanji are logograms, the readings are just different ways of reading them, but the meaning *usually* doesn’t vary that much. The reason for this ***is*** the reason kanji exists in the first place, so the fact that you blew off the articles that explain this is likely part of why you’re having trouble understanding it.
Kun’yomi are native readings, on’yomi are effectively loan-word readings, and how the biggest way their use is separated will be fairly obvious if you keep going a bit further through the textbook.
There is no formula for kanji-to-readings. Some kanji carry like a dozen readings, and there is not necessarily an even split between kun’ and on’yomi.
Most kanji carry multiple related meanings due to issues with translation, not because the kanji inherently means completely different things. Here, the kanji 木 can mean tree or wood: different words in English, but they’re extremely closely related conceptually hence the “two” meanings.
Many unrelated kanji share an identical reading, so readings don’t have any intrinsic correlation to meaning – there are only 600-some unique syllables in Japanese, so there is inevitably a TON of overlap.
You really need to learn words alongside kanji: even in your example you’re missing the fact that the word for tree (木) is き and not either of what you listed out as readings. Knowing the readings and some (not ironclad) rules around them can be helpful when navigating new words, but especially as a beginner, you need to know actual words in order to put the readings and rules into practice.
You’re overthinking it. There’s no secret formula to be found here. There are patterns and conventions, but they aren’t absolute and aren’t going to give you any magical key to understanding the language. Just think of kanji as part of the spelling of words and learn those words with their respective pronunciations.
Forget about the kanji readings and stuff, focus on learning words if you learn words you won’t have to worry about readings
A lot of great answers, but Id like to add: Japanese existed as a spoken language but did not have a writing system until Chinese characters were introduced. These characters were retrofitted to represent words and sounds in the language, along with other loanwords from Chinese that are also represented by the same characters.
Written language ≠ spoken language.
No they are not, even though they are often semantically related.
I always tell me students to imagine kun’yomi as Japanese words that have been assigned to a kanji. But since Japanese words have different semantics than their Chinese counterparts, there are often slight differences between the kun’yomi words and the Sino-Japanese words in which the on’yomi is used.
Don’t have time to expound on it more, but see for instance 安い and 太い which represent Japanese words that differ in meaning from how the character is used in Chinese (with 安い, the word in Old Japanese meant something closer in meaning to the Chinese character meaning).
Kanji are not words; they are parts which make up words, like Lego pieces which snap together.
Individually they represent concepts but are generally not words unto themselves. Of course 木 is a word but it’s most often used In combination with other kanji.
**To answer your question in your example with 木 , yes, they will *generally* share similar readings related to wood/tree.**
Here’s a reference from Jisho: [https://jisho.org/search/%E6%9C%A8%20%23kanji](https://jisho.org/search/%E6%9C%A8%20%23kanji)
Many kanji, as I’ve found, follows the same pattern, but always remember that there are exceptions. As in 木, 木曜日 [moku-yo-bi] means Thursday – which may seem generally unrelated to wood/trees.
I highly recommend using Wanikani for learning kanji as it will generally teach you the kun’yomi/on’yomi readings of each Kanji, an english word to help remember it, and it’s kanji and even relative/similar words or phrases that may involve the same kanji.
I pair this up with RoboKana, matching up my words-to-learn with kanji I’ve learned in Wanikani as the app will have you write the kanji, give you k/o readings, and words using the same kanji, how each reading may differ and if there are any exceptions!