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So, maybe this is just me, but… I’m having some frustration with the early kanji decks that are in the lessons. Specifically, when they ask me for the READING of the kanji, and in my mind I use a reading that I’ve attributed to a vocab word i’ve learned, and then it only comes up with the on’yomi reading. I’ve been sucking it up and saying “okay I’m wrong, I’ll try to remember next time that it wants the on’yomi reading.” But I mess this up.. a lot. Should I edit the cards to include the kun’yomi reading as a response or just keep drilling the on’yomi? At some point it feels like a trick question, but I guess I should be able to say ALL of the readings, in the end…
Yeah, when Koichi says “reading” he always means the on’yomi. Don’t ask me why. If you look at any of the kanji pages here, the “Reading” section lists the on’yomi, while the kun’yomi gets listed under “Vocabulary”. It’s… kinda stupid.
It’s up to you if you want to add the kun’yomi readings to the cards. Your other option is basically keep doing what you’re doing – learn vocab, and you’ll learn the readings as you go. Learning kanji readings in isolation can be problematic, because you’ve got nothing to fix your new knowledge onto. When you learn a word, you’ve learnt something with actual meaning, but when you just learn the readings, all you’ve got is mouth-noises.
I was of the same opinion as Joel until I got deeper in Wanikani (which is another of Koichi’s websites, primarily focusing on learning Kanji and Vocab). I was also frsutrated in Anki and kept getting it wrong and was doubting the whole point of learning on’yomi readings. But more I am into it, in most cases, it is a lot a lot more valuable to learn the readings they suggest (in most cases, that would be on’) as you can find your way around vocab a lot easier and even guess some words without ever seeing them before. In Wanikani it helps that the required radicals, kanji and vocab use different colours and it is a lot easier to navigate.
I am level 5 over there, and here is a good example:
Kanji – 来 （on reading is らい and it means “come”）
Not sure if you got to the lesson for verbs yet, but this one comes up a lot (きます – polite form of “to come” so kun’ reading for this one is く by the way, it is also irregular verb)
But in the vocab section you have to learn all these words:
来年 － らいねん (come and year=next year)
年来 － ねんらい (year(s) (to) come=for years, future years)
来月 － らいげつ (come and month =next month)
古来 － こらい (this one is not so obvious but makes sense, old+come=ancient)
外来 － がいらい (love this one, outside and come mean imported, came from outside)
来る － くる (and finally sole kun’ reading on the list so far, meaning to come)As you can see, learning on’ reading was very useful, and after learning all the vocab words, there is very little chance you will ever forget it :-)
This saved me heaps of time, I am now making sure I spend some extra time studying whatever reading they recommend to learn. I wish somebody explained me some kanji rules before starting my journey. So here it is what I learned so far. Learn the rules and you will save yourself some frustration.
Jukugo words – (compound kanji like all above except the last one and no hiragana attached) always use on’ reading. There are exceptions, but they usually for common words and you will have to learn them anyway. And names, Japanese names are always kun’yomi.
If hiragana attached to kanji, so far, it is always kun’yomi. There are probably exceptions, but not so many to worry about and there must be explanation why they are like that.As you can see, learning on’ reading was very useful, and after learning all the vocab words, there is very little chance you will ever forget it :-)
The point here is kinda that if you start with that list of vocab, you’ll pretty much automatically learn that 来 = らい without having to memorise that reading on its own before you start.
If hiragana attached to kanji, so far, it is always kun’yomi. There are probably exceptions, but not so many to worry about and there must be explanation why they are like that.
Interestingly, this is the one exception to the “all rules have exceptions” rule – there are no exceptions. That is, kanji with okurigana endings always use the kun’yomi.
The explanation is this: okurigana endings, used to indicate verb and adjective conjugations, originate from the original Japanese spoken language, which also exists today as the kun’yomi readings of kanji. On’yomi readings come from Chinese. So it’d be… odd, to say the least, to have a Chinese on’yomi attached to a Japanese okurigana ending.
The point here is kinda that if you start with that list of vocab, you’ll pretty much automatically learn that 来 = らい without having to memorise that reading on its own before you start.
The reason why I mentioned it, once you know the readings, you pretty much only need to focus on remembering meanings which are very odd sometimes
皮肉 - skin+meat=irony (what???) :-)
I forgot the third rule of Kanji:
-If you see a single kanji vocab word, it will use kun’yomi 99/100I think these rules should be somewhere at the front of every learning kanji section. Maybe they were there(most likely) when I started, but I either didn’t pay attention or the importance of it was not stressed enough for me to pay attention.
Thanks guys. While I agree that knowing the on’yomi may be useful in the future, I’m having a lot of trouble with it now for the same reason Joel suggests. I can’t remember it because I can’t attribute it to a meaning.
So, I’m going to edit the cards to include both, and try and remember the on’yomi as well while I do them, but I won’t focus as hard on it unless there’s some vocab that I need to remember it for.
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