Sorry if the question isn’t worded clearly, it’s very difficult to put so succinctly. I haven’t found any answers when googling, and most results seem to be answering something completely different to what I am asking.
Some background; I know that there are phonetic components in some kanji that can indicate a possible on-reading. I know it isn’t always a sure thing. And I’m not asking for which are the most important/most common to learn or even for a list of the components. But I’m also not sure if what I’m asking is a thing, the answer might just be a simple, “no!” And that is fine! This question has been coming to me whilst playing through a game involving guessing the readings for obscure place name kanji or for animal name kanji, which I know can be complex and notoriously weird and don’t always follow the rules, so it might be a totally moot point/purely theoretical as I can’t remember if I’ve come across a relevant “normal” kanji this applies to.
My question is this: if a kanji contains multiple of these phonetic components, is there a grammatical rule or theory of priority that indicates which (if any) component dictates the on-reading? Or are all on-readings potentially used (depending on context)? Does it cancel a component out if another one is there too? Or is it just totally random, and there are examples of all of those happening?
For further clarification on the sort of thing I’m asking after, if a (theoretical) kanji has a phonetic component in the left position and a different one on the right (and the two together don’t form a component themselves), is there a rule like, the component in the leftmost position is the one that indicates the reading? Or something else, it doesn’t have to be literally that.
I hope this makes sense. I’m sorry I don’t have an exact example for you to show what I mean, but I was also concerned that someone would just say, “well no because that word is just pronounced ‘x’.” So if it is just a case that there is no such rule as there is no relevant kanji it could apply to, then that’s fine and just chalk it up to overthinking and a silly question! I would presume this has been studied before if it is a possibility, but since weeks of googling has returned no results I just needed to ask, since it may even be an unspoken “rule” like adjective order in English. Thanks for any help.
8 comments
I’d love to be proved wrong but there’s no such a rule. If you know the overall meaning of the kanji usually you could guess which part is consistent with that meaning and by elimination find the phonetic part.
But your brain should start doing that guessing automatically with enough exposure to (learning) kanji/words in kanji.
Long answer: yes, with a however
Short answer: no, with a but
There are kanji with phonetic components , but honestly I can’t even identify them.
For the most part the biggest rule for kanji, which can often have 2+ readings in general, is Onyomi in compounds, Kunyomi alone.
But even that isn’t a good rule because there exists exceptions.
The best way to manage Kanji and readings is on a word by word basis, treating it as a “spelling” so to speak.
EG: for 子 which can be onyomi: し、す Kunyomi: こ
Instead of guessing the readings for 息子、帽子、 and 椅子, you would want to look them up and learn the words themselves.
息子: むす**こ**: son
帽子: ぼう**し**: hat
椅子: い**す**: chair
Kanji is not something that should be guessed at. There are times where you can guess at a reading, but ultimately it’s not a phonetic writing system like ours, and attempts at phonetic reading are best avoided.
If you mean can you always know how to pronounce a word you don’t know, based on kanji alone: no
The basic unit of Japanese is the word not the kanji character
Words have proper spellings and each must be memorized separately
Patterns exist, but are not consistent, it does get easier because there’s only so many pronunciations for each character, and most have 1-3, but there’s no solid rule, there are even mixed on-kun readings within a single word, or unique constructs like 今日
Part of the reason for the _apparent_ inconsistency is that words were imported or invented at different times over 2000 years, and retain a pronunciation from that point in history when it was introduced (or a derived or altered version of that pronunciation due to some long term shifts in pronunciation)
As my instinct and [Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BD%A2%E5%A3%B0) states without any particular source, the 部首 deals with the meaning (意符) and everything else is the sound (音符). Unfortunately the English article doesn’t contain the section relevant to your question, so you’ll have to bear the Japanese article.
Now, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by kanji with multiple phonetic components. It would’ve helped if you listed examples of the cases you describe rather than a wall of text… perhaps you believe 招 has two phonetic components, 刀 and 口? In this sense?
If so, then no; 召 is ショウ already and therefore 招 (essentially) has only one “phonetic compound”.
Kanji always only have one phonetic component (edit: assuming that they have a phonetic component at all). Which component is phonetic is determined by the etymology of the character. I.e. when the character was created it was created with a particular phonetic component and that will always be the phonetic component even if the sound correspondence isn’t particularly clear in a given language.
Without knowing the etymology of a character you can still make educated guesses about which component is phonetic. This is mainly through experience. Usually phono-semantic characters have a semantic component that is a common radical (in the dictionary sense) that indicates the rough meaning category of the character and the rest will be the phonetic component. It doesn’t take too long to learn some of the common semantic components, and eventually with exposure you’ll pick up common phonetic components as well.
I think the most common pattern for 形声文字 is having the semantic component in the left, and the phonetic component on the right. However, there are some components which (almost?) always go on the right, even when they act as the semantic component, such as 攵 and 頁. So normally if your see a kanji divided like ⿰ you should look at the right side for the sound, but if you see a 攵 or a 頁 there (or others I can’t think of right now) then look to the left, since these common semantic components. Examples: 敵 has the same on as 適, 頭 has the same on as 豆.
You definitely can’t always tell which one is which, thought: 門 is the semantic component of 関 etc., but the semantic component of 聞 is 耳.
Place names, animal names, people names, All use whatever reading and whatever old kanji they want.
Sometimes the Kanji can give you a clue about the meaning like 海星, sometimes you can use the clever ways of remembering the Kanji like for 烏賊、and sometimes there are many ways of writing the same thing like 蛸・章魚・蛸, or 海老、蝦but there is no help with reading.
Never forget 保栄茂、or 木乃伊
Or look at the 36 ways of writing the name Akira.
Outside of people,place, animal names there is some regularity, but unlike regular words that tended to bring in the OnYomi readings that got attached to native word’s meanings, and including in compounds, People/Place/Animal are just simple names for things that are not used in compounds. One reason why animal names have started to be written in Kana is because there is no relation between the sound of the word and the reading of the word in Japanese.
So イルカ was the existing name for dolphin, and the Chinese words for Dolphin 海豚 just got imported and assigned the native reading. It can help to guess at how to say words in Chinese though if you know the Japanese Kanji, and have some idea of the Chinese reading of the characters.
[This website and book ](https://thekanjicode.com/list-of-phonetic-components/) might have more of an in-depth dive into what you’re looking for.