How to know the difference between spoken kun and on

[noteventime]

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]

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

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

 

[noteventime]

Thanks for the link. Sounds hard. :jawdrop:

 

[nice gaijin]

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)

 

[noteventime]

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

 

[Glenn]

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

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.

 

[noteventime]

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.

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

 

[Glenn]

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

 

[pipokun]

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.