I recently started studying Japanese after experience studying a few different languages (primarily Korean and Chinese). I do have a bit of familiarity with Japanese from the typical “grew up watching anime” but I finally decided to start in on studying it on the side. Going into it, I knew that kanji can be read in different ways, on and kun. So I thought “I just need to learn the 2 different ways to read each kanji” or something.
Already daunting, but as I’m starting and looking up different kanji I find that each one seems to have a multitude of readings; i.e., I looked up 食 and it listed 4 different kun readings and 2 different on readings. Obviously I know that たべ is one reading because I learned it in that context, but how does one go about learning all the different readings? Experienced people – do you just wait and learn the new readings as they come along in context, or do you try to memorize all the readings as you learn new kanji?
I’ve come across a lot of kanji study pages that have a little box to write the on reading and kun readings(like this: [(example)](https://external-preview.redd.it/8iAAlAKwGZs9mGUouxuFOSbkFMEfak72BQyI7R2Zh1I.jpg?auto=webp&s=175b2ddc0904870c6d25da0d10bed3d9f62114c2) \- for people have used these, do you write all the readings or just choose one?
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I apologize if this is a really dumb question but coming from studying languages with alphabets and then Chinese (with only one reading per character), I’m a bit overwhelmed and I want to start off on the right foot for the most effective studying!
5 comments
There are many different thoughts on this, but I tend to think the best is to learn them in context, as you said. The next time you find it as 食う, you can learn it as such, and so on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/search/?q=should%20i%20learn%20different%20kanji%20readings&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/search/?q=how%20to%20learn%20kanji%20readings&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=
Generally it’s easier to learn vocabulary as a whole rather than learn specific readings. You could learn that 月 can be read as つき or げつ or you could learn that 月 means moon and is read つき while 月曜日 means Monday and is read げつようび. Learning them as vocabulary helps to cement connections so that when it comes up in context as moon you automatically read it correctly rather than try and figure it out.
It’s similar in English. When you read the word ‘father’ you don’t go “there’s an a after f so that’s a long a unlike the a in apple” instead you learned the word father and how to associate it with the word.
Don’t learn readings separately.
It’s fine to learn recognition (kanji -> English keywords), but readings are contextual. Learn words and you will eventually develop an intuition for kanji readings.
don’t
learn vocabulary. kanji is just how they’re spelled (for those words that have kanji)
you can try to rote memorize pronunciations if you really, really want to (i won’t stop you), but it’s not how you read japanese
you never, ever, at any point look at a kanji character and ask yourself “how is this character pronounced” when reading, any more than when you read this sentence you asked yourself how “o” is pronounced at various points
you recognize a word given the spelling and context in the sentence, and then you know how to pronounce it because you memorized the pronunciation when you learned the word