Hi everyone, I am learning Kanji by myself and was wondering how to determine what onyomi reading to use in a compound kanji as Kanji characters usually consist of 2 or more Onyomi readings/pronunciations. I tried searching online but the only results were distinguishing between On and Kun readings.
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There might be a few rules in some cases, but they would be kanji-specific, so your best bet is to learn the words that lie behind the kanji instead of merely learning the kanji, and then you’ll know what reading to use.
You are going at it the wrong way around. You shouldn’t learn on’yomi of a kanji in a void and then try to pick the “correct” one when reading vocabulary.
You learn about the different on’yomi of a kanji *by* learning vocabulary.
You learn the word. For example, by looking it up in a dictionary. You do not “pick” what reading to use. There is a word, it is pronounced as X, and it is written as Y.
Example: You do not see the word 生木（>!なまき!<） and think “Hmm, what readings should I use for this word today? せいもく？ せいぼく？ しょうぼく？ いきぎ？ なまき？ いのちのき？ せいき？” You pronounce it as >!なまき!< because that is the word and I made up the rest of them.
it’s similar to English in a way
in English, the letters can sound lots of different ways, but the word determines how you say the letter
in Japanese, kanji can sound lots of different ways, but the word determines how you say the kanji
Think of it like the words Pacific Ocean. C is pronounced differently every time it appears, but you’ve learned the word so you’re able to read C properly in this word. Learn a few words that use a kanji and then go from there as you keep finding that kanji in reading.
what you’re doing is learning “water” that can also be read “aqua” and “hydro”, along with learning “power” can also be read as “energy” and “electricity”. Then you ask how is “water power” read?
You want to learn words THEN associate the kanji.
Knowing the word “Hydroelectricity” before trying to say “water energy” or “aqua power” is more efficient and helps you learn how to read other similar compounds like “Aquaduct” and “Hydrothermal”
you don’t (this is asked a dozen times a day, please do searches on the subreddit)
you read words, just like how in english you can’t memorize all the possible pronunciations for “e” and then guess how to pronounce english words
memorize vocab, and with them their kanji spellings and pronunciations