Silly question about kanji

[pvtpokeymon]

I'm doing the first 80 kanji at the moment and some of the readings are confusing to me, i always though 一 is always read as one but then i read that it can be read as ひと or ひとつ which means people however there's already a kanji for this 人 does this mean that 一 can also be read as "person" ?

 

[Mike Cash]

No, it means that the sound "hito" is used for more than one word "hito". (Sort of like how "bow" can mean to bend from the waist....or the pointy end of a boat. Same sound comes out of your mouth, two entirely different words).

If you are learning kanji in isolation, without some sort of guidance from a textbook, you're going to find it incredibly confusing.

 

[pvtpokeymon]

ok does this mean kanji is to be treated more as a sound then a word? and yes im trying to find some textbooks to use to help me with kanji

---------- Post added at 00:28 ---------- Previous post was at 00:11 ----------

or is it the onyomi for use as a sound and kunyomi for use as its meaning or word

 

[nekojita]

Don't learn the readings off a list. A lot of kanji (particularly the common ones) have many different readings, and the only way to really know which one to use in a word is to know that word. It's important to know about "okurigana" which are kana that follow the kanji in some words. 一 is not read ひとつ, and any list of kanji readings should somehow split the つ off; ひと・つ or something like that, because that means "一 is read ひと in 一つ".

Something like this is good:
Sample Page
e.g. not just readings, but examples of common words that use those readings and then example sentences showing those words.

They have quite a bit free online, so you can start working through here:
Basic Kanji - The First Step of learning Kanji
And then if you like the style you can buy the book/cd from them.

 

[pvtpokeymon]

yeah ive found many sites telling me kanji and its readings both onyomi and kunyomi but none telling me the rules of how they are used or when to use what reading.

 

[nekojita]

There are some very generic guidelines, e.g. "kanji compounds (words with two or more kanji) usually use on'yomi", but no way of knowing for sure. Some compounds use kun'yomi or a mix of the two, and there are words like 大人 ("adult"), which don't use either on'yomi or kun'yomi (it is read おとな). If you look at the second link in my previous post, you can see they list a common example for 一 、 the word 一日 which is read ついたち (when referring to dates, like "April the 1st").

That is why it is important to learn words, including these common exceptions. Eventually you'll learn to make good guesses based on words you already know, but even native speakers can get caught out by difficult/unusual readings. One minor 'trick' that can sometimes help with on'yomi: many kanji have phonetic markers in them. e.g. 長、腸、張 all have the on'yomi チョウ , and 同、銅、胴 all have the on'yomi ドウ. In these cases the left hand side of the kanji has to do with meaning and the right hand side with sound.

 

[Coffeesan]

Some Kanji can have have more than 10 different readings in both On and Kun. Some are more common, some can be infered from the context of the sentence and some are absolute blind guess work to be honest. I know native Japanese speakers (university so reasonably intelligent people as well) who havent had a clue what many readings mean for Kanji I've shown them. So dont sweat it they take bloody years to learn even if you're native Japanese let alone a foreigner.

Pop "Lets learn Kanji e-book" into google, I doubt its the absolute "best" Kanji resource in the world but its quite good and has taught me a lot. Basically lots of knowledge for free.

 

[nice gaijin]

if you search for "onyomi" or "kanji readings" on this forum you should get several hits on this very subject.