Memorizing Kanji with a ton of readings

So, some Kanji have a ridiculous amount of readings. Especially the ones that are ironically simpler visually! When it comes to these, the bottleneck for memorization suddenly turns into the readings and not the appearance.

Example from my dictionary: 生
ON readings: セイ、ショウ
Kun readings: いかす、いきる、いける、う、うまれ、うまれる、うむ、うまれる、うまれ、おう、き、なす、なる、なま、はえる、はやす、むす

Only 5 strokes but.. 19 readings? I'm not even sure if I counted right anymore! And this is supposed to be an N5/old N4 kanji. I am sure there are worse ones that I am missing.


Do you guys actually memorize all these readings when studying kanji? Or just the most popular readings? Or do you just forget about readings at this point and learn compounds instead?

Thanks!

I used to memorize tons of kanji readings, and it never did me any good and I kept forgetting them again.
Now I only memorize readings in association with a particular word, and that's actually useful and I rarely forget.
I consider learning kanji readings in isolation from any particular vocabulary to be a waste of time.

You can know as many readings as you like for 大 and 人 but it won't help you read the word 大人

Also, careful of okurigana!

生きる、生ける、生かす = い. 生 is not read いきる, it has the reading い when followed by okurigana きる (or conjugated forms of that verb).
生む、生まれる, etc. = う
生す、生る = な (but なま is 生 by itself)

If your dictionary doesn't separate out okurigana (い・きる), find one that does.

The more common the kanji the more likely it is to have multiple readings and compounds which are read in non-standard ways - multiple kun-readings come about because the kanji is used in lots of different words, after all.

生きる、生まれる、生クレーム (なま) are all pretty common. Both the on-readings are common. Some of the other kun-readings are pretty obscure - 生地 is the only word I can think of for き and a lot of the others are basically "there is this one verb read like this that can be written with 生"

SomeCallMeChris said:

I used to memorize tons of kanji readings, and it never did me any good and I kept forgetting them again.
Now I only memorize readings in association with a particular word, and that's actually useful and I rarely forget.
I consider learning kanji readings in isolation from any particular vocabulary to be a waste of time.

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I see. Maybe it's time for me to start learning compounds seriously and not just here-and-there..

nekojita said:

You can know as many readings as you like for 大 and 人 but it won't help you read the word 大人

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Why not? What is the point of readings if the compounds end up different than the readings anyways? Shouldn't that be in the readings, then? Or if it's not, why do more obscure readings get to be official readings?

nekojita said:

If your dictionary doesn't separate out okurigana (い・きる), find one that does.

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Thanks for the warning. It does, but I had to take it out when pasting it on the forum, to avoid mojibake.

Silty said:

Why not? What is the point of readings if the compounds end up different than the readings anyways? Shouldn't that be in the readings, then? Or if it's not, why do more obscure readings get to be official readings?

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See an explanation about 熟字訓[jukujikun] in the wiki page linked below.

Kanji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is one of the reasons why people recommend that you should learn kanji as words, not individually.


As for 生[い]かす vs 生[い]きる, 生[う]む vs 生[う]まれる, 生[な]す vs 生[な]る, 生[は]やす vs 生[は]える, these are all "transitive vs intransitive" pairs, so it's possible to consider these are four readings, not eight.

Silty said:

So, some Kanji have a ridiculous amount of readings. Especially the ones that are ironically simpler visually! When it comes to these, the bottleneck for memorization suddenly turns into the readings and not the appearance.

Example from my dictionary: 生
ON readings: セイ、ショウ
Kun readings: いかす、いきる、いける、う、うまれ、うまれる、うむ 、うまれる、うまれ、おう、き、なす、なる、なま、は える、はやす、むす

Only 5 strokes but.. 19 readings? I'm not even sure if I counted right anymore! And this is supposed to be an N5/old N4 kanji. I am sure there are worse ones that I am missing.


Do you guys actually memorize all these readings when studying kanji? Or just the most popular readings? Or do you just forget about readings at this point and learn compounds instead?

Thanks!

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生 is problem the hardest kanji in terms of number of readings.

When you start studying Kanken 3, pre 2 and 2 kanjis, a lot of them only have one Onyomi, so a lot of the "harder" kanjis are actually easier than the "easy" kanji.

大人 is おとな, and you cannot split this into a reading for each individual kanji (Toritoribe's link explains more).

The lists of readings on the jouyou kanji list are an indication of which words you (if you are writing in some official capacity) can write without using furigana. As some of the non-standard compound readings are very common words like 今日(きょう) and 大人(おとな), attached to the jouyou list is a supplementary table of words. These words can also be written in kanji even though they use non-standard readings (for example, 弥生 - read やよい - is now on there since 2010). A word like 台詞 (せりふ), even though the kanji are both jouyou, on the other hand, is not on the list, and would probably have furigana or be rewritten with kana, if the writer was following the jouyou list.

Remember that the jouyou list is:
* primarily a guide for the education of native speakers and the writing of official documentation
- e.g. limits how government documents and forms, entry exams, etc, are written
* a guide for non-government publications/the general public as well

So if you were writing a document which was for something official or publication and were requested to follow the jouyou list or wanted to make sure you were being consistent in kanji use, you would use those readings (and the supplementary words table), to determine whether you needed to either add furigana or change a word to kana/use a different kanji.

It is not:
*legally binding for general publication - newspapers have long had their own style guides and kanji lists which mostly follow the jouyou but often have some additions (kanji they treat like jouyou) and removals (kanji which are jouyou but which are not used).
*set in stone (changed quite recently, in fact)
*paid much attention to in informal (internet etc) contexts
*in any way, shape, or form designed for the aid or convenience of foreigners learning Japanese.

Thanks everyone, I kind of understand a little better now. I guess I'll just have to spend a little more effort than expected on the "simple" kanji, and the later ones will be easier.

nekojita said:

As some of the non-standard compound readings are very common words like 今日(きょう) and 大人(おとな), attached to the jouyou list is a supplementary table of words.

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Awesome! I've actually been looking for something like that, but I am having trouble finding it with Wikipedia's pages about Joyo, or from Googling. Sorry if it's somewhere obvious and I'm missing it, but could you please direct me to the official vocab list?

It's on the Japanese wikipedia list (scroll down - heading is 付表). The English wikipedia pages are somewhat lacking in info by comparison.

In a more official sense, the various lists will be on the MEXT website somewhere as well. For example here there are a couple of PDFs - the second is a big list of all (?) the kanji and the supplementary words with an indication of which words/readings are for primary, middle, or high school (by circles in the three columns). So if you find 生 in there you'll see that おう and き are marked as middle school and the rest primary school.

Even here there's some weirdness - I don't know why for 明日 they list あす but not あした, but oh well. You can assume that the words in the supplementary list marked as for learning by primary school students count as 'freaking common'. For the others, if you did want a systematic way of learning readings, you could look for words which contain the readings which are listed as primary school level; e.g. for 白 you can ignore びゃくinitially.

nekojita said:

It's on the Japanese wikipedia list (scroll down - heading is 付表). The English wikipedia pages are somewhat lacking in info by comparison.

In a more official sense, the various lists will be on the MEXT website somewhere as well. For example here there are a couple of PDFs - the second is a big list of all (?) the kanji and the supplementary words with an indication of which words/readings are for primary, middle, or high school (by circles in the three columns). So if you find 生 in there you'll see that おう and き are marked as middle school and the rest primary school.

Even here there's some weirdness - I don't know why for 明日 they list あす but not あした, but oh well. You can assume that the words in the supplementary list marked as for learning by primary school students count as 'freaking common'. For the others, if you did want a systematic way of learning readings, you could look for words which contain the readings which are listed as primary school level; e.g. for 白 you can ignore びゃくinitially.

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Thanks so much! 116 compounds seems like an awfully short list compared to the amount of kanji, but that's actually better for me, since it gives me something manageable to work with at the beginning.

I guess I'll have to manually split it up based on the highest jouyou level of kanji contained in each compound, and then study them in that order.

This is really useful. I'm surprised so little attention is paid to this list by most of the Japanese-studying resources out there.

EDIT: I edited out a question because I figured it out.

The same provisos apply to those compounds as to everything else; not all of them are priority for a second language learner (although most of the ones marked "primary" are. Most. 今朝 and 時計 sure, 川原 I'm not convinced). But it's at least some guide to what are considered the most common exceptions.

You'll notice other issues like "rendaku" (sound changes), e.g. 日曜日 is にちようび, where the reading for the last kanji goes from ひ to び.

大人 (おとな)
大人気 (おとなげ)
大人気 (だいにんき)

東 (ひがし)
東海 (とうかい)
東海運 (あづまかいうん)

Attempting to learn all the readings for kanji independent of the context of learning the language at the same time is a fool's errand. Lately, it seems a very popular one, though. I blame the internet.

I would recommend not worrying too much about the crazy ones. They are usually high frequency and end up having a ton of readings. What's good about that is, if you don't worry about them, they will come up frequently in reading anyway. There are a ton of Kanji with only 1 or 2 readings. Spend your time on those instead. From personal experience, once you learn about 300 or 400, the Kanji really mellow out with readings.

I do agree that a person would learn quickly if they spent all of their time reading. However, I get bored of the same thing all the time, so I enjoy basic memorization and writing practice for the sake of variety. I would definitely shy someone away from memorizing word lists as the entirety of their studies. As a general rule, the thing you want to avoid is usually the exact thing you need to face. Looks like I'm getting off topic though...

BrianLewis said:

I do agree that a person would learn quickly if they spent all of their time reading. However, I get bored of the same thing all the time, so I enjoy basic memorization and writing practice for the sake of variety.

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Exactly! Some people think memorizing all the time is boring, but so is reading when you have to look up half the kanji. Plus, memorization can help with the less frequent kanji. I'm trying to balance out my learning methods.

BrianLewis said:

As a general rule, the thing you want to avoid is usually the exact thing you need to face.

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Agreed. When you step outside of the structure provided by Anki or other SRS, and outside of the practice provided by reading native materials, you need a slightly twisted personality to succeed with something of the magnitude of kanji. I think that trying to constantly see your own weakspots in new ways, and to challenge yourself with the things you are worse at, is not something that people are born with. Finding new ways of going against the flow and forcing your brain to do things it's not accustomed to seems like a skill that can be developed over a lifetime.

BrianLewis said:

Looks like I'm getting off topic though...

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Not at all! The more things like this we know about memorizing, the better we can memorize (provided they're actually true, which yours is).


So, I've decided to try and memorize at least one word for each kanji that I learn, preferably a common word. And I'll memorize the reading that goes with that word, if it's a standard reading. I really won't try to tackle all of the readings all at once. I'll just learn a couple at a time, then come back later and learn some more.

Silty said:

So, some Kanji have a ridiculous amount of readings. Especially the ones that are ironically simpler visually! When it comes to these, the bottleneck for memorization suddenly turns into the readings and not the appearance.

Example from my dictionary: 生
ON readings: セイ、ショウ
Kun readings: いかす、いきる、いける、う、うまれ、うまれる、うむ、うまれる、うまれ、おう、き、なす、なる、なま、はえる、はやす、むす

Only 5 strokes but.. 19 readings? I'm not even sure if I counted right anymore! And this is supposed to be an N5/old N4 kanji. I am sure there are worse ones that I am missing.


Do you guys actually memorize all these readings when studying kanji? Or just the most popular readings? Or do you just forget about readings at this point and learn compounds instead?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

No, and I discourage you to do that... Don't deal too much on the on and kun, I suggest that you memorize it with a word, or on what word it is used.. In that way, you will memorize it faster, for example.. teacher, sensei, せんせい、先生。<-- something like this...