I’m really confused about Japanese pronunciation. Specifically, I don’t understand why there are so many readings for the same kanji, and it’s making it hard to motivate myself to learn Japanese because I feel like I need an encyclopedia of knowledge to remember all the readings of each individual kanji, and then on top of that 2 alphabets, and then I need to know 2,000+ kanji plus particles and what they mean together with kana words as well. I came across the word 二人 in a show I’m watching and ?? It’s pronounced “futari”?! what. the. ever-loving. fuck. I just can’t find anything online explaining why it’s not “nijin”, when the characters when separate are “ni” and “jin”. I’m going crazy, why is Japanese so difficult to learn? It’s like the country conspired against any effort to learn their language.
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I mean just from a viability standpoint, what is gained by having such a complex system? China successfully managed a wholesale effort to simplify characters to bolster literacy rates fairly recently, why doesn’t Japanese follow suit?
8 comments
This will happen a lot in Japanese. Take a look at [生](https://jisho.org/search/%E7%94%9F%20%23kanji) has loads of different readings.
I know what you mean – it’s intense but you just have to get over it if you want to learn Japanese.
I worked out how to read Greek in a couple of weeks while on holiday without really trying. Meanwhile I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for 40 years and would struggle to read young adult fiction at this point. It is what it is. At least you’ll never run out of things to learn with Japanese – and honestly I think that’s what I like about it.
it’s best to not try to decode kanji like it’s a strict pronunciation system, because it’s not. it’s a product of a couple thousand years of linguistic drift across multiple languages. kind of like how much of a mess english pronunciation is. how many pronunciations of “e” are there? can you just memorize every single possible pronunciation of “e” and then expect to read english? nope
just take japanese one word at a time. each has a meaning, a pronunciation, and a spelling that might involve kanji. eventually, you start to notice patterns, because there are finite number of ways to pronounce 人 just like there are finite pronunciations for “e”. but rote memorization won’t help much. you can do it if it feels good and to the degree that it might help with just recognizing the characters more easily, but don’t knock yourself out about it
focus on words. you don’t need a spelling to listen to or speak them, after all. yes it’s important to read, too, but words exist independently from their glyphs
Counters like you used in your example, in particular, are a bit bonkers. Lots of different items, or classes of item, have specific ways of counting them.
As for the two alphabets, don’t let that get you down. English also has two alphabets that are both used to represent the same sounds, and you presumably have no problem with those 52 symbols ( ‘A’ & ‘a’ both sound the same, but they look different and are used differently when forming words). Hiragana and Katakana are similar in that they both represent the same sounds, they just serve different functions.
Try not to get too into your head with it. If you go at anything, particularly a language, too hard you’ll burn yourself out and give up. Remember that even Japanese people spend their entire youth learning kanji, and still know fewer than half of them by the time they graduate high school.
Just focus on the basics first. If you look at the entirety of any language, it can feel overwhelming. Japanese is no different. It takes time, but you’ll get it.
The language is complex and considered one of the hardest to learn. It’s not logically designed. Accepting things the way they are is going to help you learn faster than looking up the “why” behind everything. If you want a simpler language, learn a different one, if you want logical maybe lojban? 🙂
You do not need encyclopaedic knowledge of the readings to learn the language, unless your looking to get N1 which if you are starting out is a long way off.
It’s hard for sure and sometimes it doesn’t make sense but the English language doesn’t sometimes either, it’s just a language thing.
I would also like to add I once watched a video of Japanese people trying to recall the many readings for 生. Many couldn’t
Why is 2nd pronounced “second” instead of “twond”? Why is it not just twoth (2th)? In the end, you don’t need to know why. Neither do you need to learn kanji individually. Learn words in their kanji forms, because you will almost never be using kanji just by themselves.
In most languages, irregularities are far more common in frequently-used words than infrequently-used ones. The most common verb in English, *to be*, is extremely irregular, conjugating into the unrecognizably irregular forms *am*, *are*, *is*, *was*, and *were*. It is easy to remember these because they’re used so often. Rare words, less so.
*Hitori* and *futari* are irregular in part because Japanese people ascribe additional meanings to them. *Hitori* means “one person,” but it can also mean “alone” or “single.” *Futari* means “two people,” but can also refer to a couple. Beyond that point, the special meanings disappear, so it becomes regular on’yomi: *san’nin*, *yonin*, etc.
The readings for 一 and 二 used here are not unique to these two words. You’ll see the *wago* number system get used plenty.