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Hello, I have been studying on this site for about a month now, and I’m still having trouble with identifying when to use which pronunciation with kanji. I’m at the point where I should be working on finishing up 2-2 stroke kanji, but I still know that I can’t use the first set properly (by not knowing/remembering the kanji vocab deck in Anki) I haven’t had any trouble with hiragana, understanding of the sentences and structure, and have had no problem with learning any of the nouns or other concepts thus far. Even with the kanji, I know the meanings and the readings, memorizing that much isn’t the issue, but when I’m seeing them in the examples of sentences or phrases I pretty much never get it correct. Can anyone help me with a way to be able to know how to identify when to use which reading in a way other than how it is explained on this site? I’ve reread the pages pertaining to the on and kun readings multiple times, but when I’m seeing them in real time while studying I still haven’t been able to read the sentences using the proper readings. I can translate them, and I know that I could just memorize them as I see them, I’m actually pretty good at memorizing and learning that way. Unfortunately though, by doing that (simply memorizing), I won’t be doing myself any favors in the long run because it doesn’t help me solve the problem of being unable to identify how it supposed to be read. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I’m falling behind where I would like to be at this point because of this problem.
Keep in mind that I, myself, am still learning. From looking at the kanji that you are working on, from what you have said, there aren’t a lot of good examples. Numbers are a bit of an oddity from what I’ve seen. They usually use the on’yomi readings when by themselves, which is different from most other kanji that I’ve learned.
I’m currently working on section 8-2, and the pattern that most of them follow, is that if it is one kanji by itself, it will use the kun’yomi reading. For example, if you see 人 by itself, it is most likely ひと.
If you see a kanji with hiragana attached, then it will also most likely use the kun’yomi reading. For example, numbers used as counters that you have learned. 九つ for “9 things”, since it has the つ attached, it is most likely ここのつ.
If you see two kanji attached to each other with no hiragana, you will usually use the on’yomi readings. There are no kanji that you have studied that follow this rule yet though. The first good one comes in the next section (3-1) so I will try to give an example from that one, and you can see it when you get to it (sorry!).
The kanji 口 is a perfect example of all of the rules. 口 by itself uses the kun’yomi reading. 入り口 is two kanji with hiragana attached and uses the kun’yomi readings again. 人口 is two kanji together with no hiragana and uses the on’yomi readings for both.Sorry for the long-winded reply, but hopefully it helps a little. :)
That’s a pretty good explanation, but note that there’s about a thousand and one exceptions. To use your example of 口, 入り口 is sometimes written as 入口, which has the same reading. And then there’s 川口, which, despite being a multi-kanji compound word, uses kun’yomi (かわぐち).
Your best bet is to learn vocab, and as a result you’ll pick up the kanji readings as you go. If you just try to learn the readings in isolation, you’ve got nothing to connect it to anything else, and so you just lose it again.
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