I’m a beginner and I’ve been learning new kanji almost every day, and for every new kanji I learn, I learn all the common ways to pronounce it, however I’m having trouble distinguishing which ones are the onyomi pronunciations and which are the kunyomi pronunciations. Is it important for me to know which is which for every kanji, or will I be ok if I just learn the different ways to say it without knowing? My goal is to be able to read and listen to japanese content, if that helps.
5 comments
This is why it’s generally recommended to learn *words* instead of kanji readings. If you learn words, then there’s no confusion about when to use which reading.
It’s not really all that important. It can help with guessing a new word you’ve never seen before, and perhaps for remembering some words, but it’s not that big a deal. In time, it will probably become quite obvious which readings are of which type (at least for the most part), but it’s not something you should expend extra effort on.
As you get further along and learn more vocabulary, it will start to get more obvious. Kunyomi tend to be much longer and more syllabic, and they’re also usually words themselves in Japanese. (eg arashi, mono, hataraku, kataru, hanashi) The onyomi, coming from Old Chinese, tend to be mostly simple one or two -syllable sounds that are usually not words by themselves (eg KAN, SHOU, MOU, HAN, SHA). As others have said, though, it’s not super important to know which is which as long as you’re using them to actually learn words, even most Japanese folks themselves are not really conscious of it without thinking about it.
onyomi is most often written in katakana while kunyomi in hiragana
whoever downvoted me mustve never seen kanji dictionary in their life XDD
If you can differentiate kun and on readings….it will be easier to guess pronunciations when you dont know the word…other than that….i dont see any other benefit to knowing which reading they are (its still a huge benefit)……..
more often than not i find kun yomi to sounds slightly unique…specially in jlpt kanji up to n2….this is not the case for every kanji but it should help
For example
政 まつりごと
回 まわる
当 あたる
This makes it easier to associate a word with its kunreading and meaning…because even though there are words that may sound the same…at a beginner stage every time you see or hear words like the ones above, they are usually related to that kanji (and are usually present when learning the kun reading)
While the onyomi is a little more samy sounding and is usually only composed of 1 to 3 character.
Example
政 セイ ショウ
回 カイ エ
当 トウ
(of course, in this example they are not the same on yomi…but just wanted to stick with the same kanji as examples…however onyomi will repeat so much more than kunyomi in different kanji…which is why they will feel samy sometimes…it all depends on the radicalswhich means as you get better at recognizing radicals, you will get better at guessing on yomi….)
Hope this helps 😄