Should I really know On-Yomi? Beginner’s question

9 comments

1. On-Yomi is not how the Chinese say it, it’s how the *Japanese* say it based on the Chinese.

   So, yes, you should.

   On-Yomi is used everywhere.

   Imagine trying to learn English, but only the pure English words. You wouldn’t learn words like library, which is French.

2. On-yomi are *derived* from Chinese, but they bear very little resemblance to “how Chinese speak each kanji”—Son Goku (孫悟空) has only a vague resemblance to “Sun Wukong”. On-yomi aren’t in any meaningful way “used in Chinese”. Where they *are* used is in Japanese, particularly in compound words.

   So if you learn only kun-yomi you’ll find the word, say, 空爆 “Kuubaku“ “aerial bombardment“ and you’ll try to read it something like, probably, “sora-hazu“ and not a single person will know what you’re talking about because that’s not a word in Japanese.

3. >Japanese, however had words for those ideas that wouldn’t match the original chinese pronunciation on kanji, as the kanji for flower can be read as “Ka” if you are going for the On-Yomi (chinese) or “Hana” if you go for Kun-Yomi.

   One does not just pick and choose what pronunciation to use. Just because か is a valid reading for 花 in some contexts, doesn’t mean it’s correct for all contexts. Just because you see 花 in a word like 花火 doesn’t mean it’s “か-something” because か is irrelevant to how that particular word is actually said. Vocabulary dictates what pronunciation you are supposed to use. Generally speaking, that’s not up for debate. Questions like yours is why more advanced people keep telling beginners to just learn vocabulary, not pronunciations out of context.

   Besides, on’yomi was based on how Japanese people from centuries ago heard various centuries-old Chinese dialects. As far as modern Japanese is concerned, on’yomi is still Japanese regardless of its Chinese origins. You couldn’t just ask a Chinese speaker “に かいぶかい せつ にちぶん?” and have it be understood as “你会不会说日文?” despite technically using “valid-in-Japanese” on’yomi that originated from Chinese along with proper Mandarin grammar.

4. You do have to use ON readings to read Japanese, as has been mentioned they are not actually Chinese readings, they were simply derived from Chinese centuries ago.

   However, I don’t think you should worry about ‘learning readings’ at all, as per this snippet.

   — Cut-n-Paste —

   Learning Words and How to Spell Them (not learning “readings” of Kanji)

   I would recommend you learn the pronunciations of words, not the readings of
   kanji. Memorizing lists of kanji readings in isolation is a headache inducing
   exercise, and having gone through that exercise — you still need to learn
   the words themselves.

   Sometimes those words are unique to the kanji compound use to spell them, like
   今日＝きょう and 明日＝あした. There aren’t a lot of these unique readings, but
   they do appear in some very common words.

   On the other hand, the are systematic phonetic changes that can happen, and
   do happen in a lot of words.

   For example (don’t worry if you don’t know the characters, it’s just to
   demonstrate how readings are sometimes formed) adding voicing, like

   か⇒が as in 銀河⇒ぎん＋か⇒ぎんが

   or collapsing a つ+consonant or double-consonant into a っ, like

   結構 ⇒ けつ＋こう ⇒ けっこう, 恰好 ⇒ かく＋こう ⇒ かっこう.

   For reasons like this, it’s simply going to be easier to learn your words as
   words, the same as you would with any other language. Trying to work out your
   words from the readings listed for the character is just not going to go well.
   Not to say that you won’t get a sense for how unknown words are probably
   pronounced after awhile, but it’s not an exact science.

   — Cut-n-Paste —

5. This is like asking if you can learn English without using any words from Latin or Greek. Just like the historical versions of those languages have been modified and adapted into modern English, so was ancient Chinese into Japanese. And like Greek and Spanish and English have evolved since the time of Chaucer, so have Chinese and Japanese. So yes. You have to learn onyomi but you learn them as part of Japanese.

6. don’t fixate on yomi

   just learn words

   if you want to maximize yomi learning, then any time you learn a word with a new kanji, go out of your way to learn more words that use that same kanji that use every reading of said kanji

   but really, just take it as you go. the patterns eventually form over time. but shoving a bunch of yomi down your gullet up front doesn’t do much more than frustrate, it’s easily forgettable info that’s not critical early on

7. Loving all the super-relevant examples for a beginner.

   Let’s take a look at Sunday and Monday.

   Sunday is 日曜日, *nichiyoubi*.

   The first 日 has the *on-yomi* of *nichi*, the second 日 has the *kun-yomi* of *hi,* which changes to *bi*.

   The meaning of 日 can be “sun” or can be “day”, depending on the context, and either *yomi* can have either meaning as well.

   In 日本 and 日曜, 日 means “sun” and uses the *on-yomi* of *ni* or *nichi.*

   In 一日 (*ichinichi -* a period of 1 day), *nichi* means “day”.

   Then 日々 (*hibi* – daily) and 曜日 (*youbi* – day of the week), it’s the *kun-yomi* and it means “day” too.

   Then back to words like 日焼け (*hiyake* – sunburn/tan) or 日向 (*hinata -* in sunlight) or 朝日 (*asahi -* morning sun), the *kun-yomi* of *hi* means “sun”.

   If you say 月 as *tsuki* (*kun-yomi*), it means the moon, but say it as *gatsu* (*on-yomi*) and it means month, or as *getsu* (*on-yomi*) it means Monday… or month!

   So there’s no avoiding *on-yomi*. If it helps though, you don’t often need to know whether something is actually *on* or *kun*- I had to check which was which for some of the above. As others have said, remember the vocab as whole words, without so much rote memorising of individual kanji and their lists of readings.

8. Many じゅくご(熟語) use Onyomi. Yes, please memorize Onyomi. We use じゅくご　quite often in our daily conversation. I tell students to memorize both readings.

9. As others have said, don’t fixate on memorizing the readings. As you learn vocabulary and appropriate contexts you will naturally start to recognize and recall those readings when you come across and learn new words anyways.

   Rote memorization of kanji is a fantastic way to be able to brag about how many anki-deck flashcards you know while being totally unable to carry an actual conversation. So it’s better to engage with authentic material and practice actual use to support grammar and vocab studies.