Disclaimer: I have almost no experience with Japanese other than reading chapter 1 of a learn Japanese book, so basically I can count and introduce myself. I’m probably gonna sound really dumb but I’m genuinely curious.
Hiragana is syllables, so you can read a hiragana word and be like “Yea I know how to pronounce this.” You can sound it out.
However, to my understanding, my name in kanji can be sounded out as “Beautiful Forest” and be pronounced “John.” How in the world do people know both the meaning and the separate name pronunciation? Is it just like, a common knowledge thing that everyone knows from experience people named “Beautiful Forest” are a John?
Do people need to introduce themselves and specify like “Hi I’m beautiful forest pronounced John” Does the teacher taking attendance the first day go around like “Hi beautiful forest, what’s your real name?” and you just put “John” in hiragana next to it on the paper in parenthesis?
5 comments
(1) You find out indirectly
(2) You make an educated guess
(3) You make a plausible guess
(4) You ask the person how to write and pronounce their name
Regarding introductions, you can just write their name out in kana, so you would only need to ask them for the Kanji of their name (assuming they have them) if you specifically want/need to know that.
It is almost insulting to use Kanji names for foreigners because it is not something that you can actually use in any official capacity even if you are in Japan. A fun alias, but this kind of gimmick I personally see as insulting and confusing. Just stick to Katakana or if you must, a pronounceable nickname. I’ve been reading a light novel where the foreign exchange student has the name Geraldine Bernstein (ジェラルディン・バーンシュタイン, Jerarudin Bānshutain) and that’s a pain, so it got shortened.
Just try to remember it one by one,although it’s painful.There are some rules in pronounciation of kanji name,but it’s too complex for the beginners.
What you need to know is that one character may have hundreds of pronouncians and one pronuncian may have hundreds of characters,and people just use their “feeling” to link the characters with pronounciation in a conversation.
The wikipedia may be helpful:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification
In a general sense you hear first the name of the person then you find out how it’s written with kanji and then you just remember it.
But if you’re not in japan amd you’re starting to learn the language then you have to be familiar with kanji first then look some anki deck for japanese name and practice with that
Are you just talking about how to pronounce names written in kanji or how to pronounce kanji in general and using the name John as an example?