How to know the difference between spoken kun and on

N

noteventime

後輩

1 Jan 2006

4

0

• 1 Jan 2006

• #1

Hello and sorry for the long title,
I'm new to this forum and very new to the japanese language, the little i know is self thought (mostly through wikibooks's japanese book and "knuckles in china land") so please don't flame me if i missed something fundamental .
After learning hiragana and katakana pretty well i began with a few kanjis, something that confused me was the On and kun readings of every kanji, abd even more when i found a kanji were the on reading was the same as the kun reading of another:
ひと (人) and ひと (一).
Probably a stupid question but i guess it's better to ask anyway.

 

kumo

絶望と共に散りゆく者

1 Aug 2004

109

4

• 1 Jan 2006

• #2

Wikipedia has a pretty good article about it:
Kanji - Wikipedia

Sorry if this is not what you're looking for.

 

N

noteventime

後輩

1 Jan 2006

4

0

• 1 Jan 2006

• Thread starter
• #3

Thanks for the link. Sounds hard. :jawdrop:

 

nice gaijin

Resident Realist

Moderator

Donor

Twenty-year veteran

8 Aug 2005

7,316

3,727

• 1 Jan 2006

• #4

really it just comes from a combination of context and practice; chances are if it's a part of a kanji compound, it'll be onyomi (ie 新聞), and if it's not part of a compound, it's probably kunyomi (新しい） In written context, this is probably the easiest way to differentiate which way to read the kanji. Of course, there are several exceptions to this, which you just have to learn to recognize (大人 etc)

 

N

noteventime

後輩

1 Jan 2006

4

0

• 1 Jan 2006

• Thread starter
• #5

As soon as the work exception enters language I get scared .

 

Glenn

一切皆苦

8 Jan 2004

7,842

200

• 2 Jan 2006

• #6

noteventime said:

...the on reading was the same as the kun reading of another:
ひと (人) and ひと (一).

Click to expand...

FYI, those are both kun readings.

Now for a little shameless self-promotion: I wrote this summary of how kanji work a while back. I'm not sure if it's easier to swallow than the wikipedia article (I haven't read it), but I'll link to it anyway.

 

N

noteventime

後輩

1 Jan 2006

4

0

• 2 Jan 2006

• Thread starter
• #7

Glenn said:

FYI, those are both kun readings.

Now for a little shameless self-promotion: I wrote this summary of how kanji work a while back. I'm not sure if it's easier to swallow than the wikipedia article (I haven't read it), but I'll link to it anyway.

Click to expand...

I just noticed after looking both words up in wiktionary, was hoping nobody would notice.

 

Glenn

一切皆苦

8 Jan 2004

7,842

200

• 2 Jan 2006

• #8

Haha, yeah. I've done similar things too.

 

P

pipokun

先輩

4 Feb 2005

2,559

46

• 7 Jan 2006

• #9

this famous phrase is not the on-kun difference, but you can find millions of homonyms in hiragana, so the kanji is quite a useful tool.

きしゃのきしゃはきしゃできしゃした。

Hope this is to encourage your kanji learning, not to discourage...
Good luck.