Recently I decided to learn the different Kunyomi and Onyomi readings of kanji but theres so much of them and it’s difficult to remember all of them. For example 二 can be read as ふた, ふたつ, ふたたび, ニ, and ジ.
Do you have to learn all the kanji readings or just the most used ones? If so how would you know which to learn and which ones to ignore?
11 comments
It can also be read as ふつ, as in 二日 (ふつか）.
If you’re just starting, just learn the readings that you need to know, and slowly build them up. It helps to know the base words before you get too deep into learning all the readings, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed.
You should only worry about learning the most common readings at first since the least common ones would almost overcomplicate things as you start out and can become a little messy. Imo, it would be better to learn all the uncommon readings as you come across them in your studies, rather than bulk learning everything in the beginning. It’s more efficient and won’t confuse you as much.
No, don’t try to learn every possible reading. Find some common, useful words that use the kanji, and if the reading doesn’t appear in any of them don’t worry about it.
For example, に is the most common one, but ふた is important for certain counters, like 二人 or 二つ.
Also, make sure you watch for okurigana. 二 is not read ふたつ. 二つ is read ふたつ. Whatever source you are using should have shown it as ふた・つ or something to separate the hiragana part from the kanji part. If it didn’t, throw the whole source away.
You should learn vocabs not the individual readings.
I don’t know how many times I have already written this
You should learn one common reading so that when you come across a new word you have an idea of how it’s read.
But focus primarily on kanji meanings (ie 時 is “time”) and words as a whole. (ie 時計 is “tokei” which is “clock”)
You’re almost certainly not going to make it far, trying to learn readings in isolation like that.
There’s arguably going to be EXACTY ONE instance when you’d need to know ALL the readings… and this time is something that foreigners will almost never have to worry about, and even Japanese people don’t get involved in this instance- unless they’re super-scholarly.
That instance is something called the Kanji Kentei… basically, it’s a very difficult- even for native Japanese!- kanji test that wants to test you on ALL the fine details of kanji. I should also mention that it’s often just for pure bragging rights. There’s no need for foreigners to ever take it, and again, even Japanese people struggle with the higher levels of it.
So don’t worry about learning all the readings for any given kanji. Just learn the most commonly-used ones.
You don’t have to remember all the kanji.
Because we Japanese don’t remember all the kanji. 😂
However, we think it is enough to remember the necessary kanji. Of course, it is very important to remember as many kanji as possible because it will be highly educated.
For that reason, kanji is divided into two types: common kanji and non-regular kanji.
The common kanji is about 2000 kanji, and they are read about 4800.
As others have answered, it is the most efficient way to memorize kanji with vocabulary instead of memorizing all the kanji.
No.
Learn the kanji’s appearance and meaning through a dedicated kanji learning method such as Remembering the Kanji, and learn vocabulary to pick up all the readings in context. Don’t do what you’re doing – it’s painfully inefficient, and the information you’re picking up is useless without any vocabulary knowledge.
No, the only thing you need learn from kanji is the meaning of the kanji. All the kun and you will get from reading book. Learn on and kun without vocabulary is meaningless.
Unless you’re doing the kanji kentei, no.