This topic contains 3 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Hey,
I’ve been using TextFugu for a few days now. I’m currently on the level 4 Kanji and I’m starting to notice very many identical or similar readings for multiple kanji. For example, many mnemonics use Koichi because the reading is ‘Kou’. Jo or Jou also seem quite popular. There’s also “hi” for sun and the kunyomi reading of “fire” etc. – At this moment, I can manage all this, but it seems like some kind of trend and I’m really really curious how this will evolve once I get to the complex Kanji. Would be great if anybody could shed some light on this – how hard it will become to distinguish kanji vocab by ear etc.
Thanks!
There are many homophones in Japanese, (words that sound the same but mean different things) but context will usually give you the idea of which is being used.
Really its not a great deal different than in English which also has plenty of homophones, http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/homophones.htm
How do you deal with homophones in English? Just do the same in Japanese.
The on’yomi of kanji comes from Chinese, which (ignoring tones) only has a fairly small number of different sounds (though I’m no expert, so I could be completely wrong). As well as こう and じょう, other readings I often encounter are しょう, ちょう, しん, けん and (to a slightly lesser extent) せい.
So how do you tell them apart? Easiest option: don’t learn them in a vacuum. Learn them as part of vocab. Since you know that, for example, 小学生 (しょうがくせい) means “elementary school student”, you’re not likely to confuse 小 with, say, 商 or 将.
Thanks, you two!
vlgi, you’re right. I’ve never even thought about that – I did notice that English has many words that sound the same before, but it never was a problem for me and I never even made the connection to Kanji here. So yeah, you’re right.
Joel, what you said makes perfect sense — I guess I’m not yet thinking clearly when it comes to Kanji. One thing I only just now realized thanks to your post is that in most cases, the short, ambiguous on’yomi reading won’t even appear as a complete vocab, and therefore it doesn’t really matter if it’s ambiguous.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.