#onyomi

[ninelanguages]

onyomi & kunyomi

Onyomi is the Chinese pronunciation of a kanji. This is usually used when a kanji does not stand alone. It is called Chinese BUT it is part of the Japanese language.

Kunyomi is the Japanese pronunciation of a kanji. Usually used when a kanji stands alone.

To understand when it does and does not stand alone, you have to learn to read Japanese.

Please understand that there will be expectations, but this can be used as a basic rule when unsure.

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

On'yomi, or it's all Greek to me

(I'll describe something really useful for memorizing the on'yomi readings of many kanji at the end of the article, so you might also want to skip ahead. It's the part with all the kanji in it, can't miss it, really.)

When you learn Japanese, you learn many facts that sometimes make you wish you didn't. You happily beaver away at learning to write kanji only to pick up on the fact, that Japanese has two predominant ways to read almost any kanji: on'yomi and kun'yomi.

You could on'yomi "the Chinese readings" and kun'yomi "the Japanese readings" and you would be both right and wrong. So very wrong.

Well, not entirely. The notion is actually useful. On'yomi are readings derived from the evolving Chinese language of different time periods but pronounced wrong. (Remember, Japanese doesn't emulate Chinese pitch and has a limited set of sounds.) And the kun'yomi preserve various readings from various parts of Japan that were the sounds of the original Japanese language predating the Chinese writing system. (Get the deets here.)

Wait. If you have native Japanese sounds, why do that? Who on Earth would do such a thing!?

Right. It's us! (I'm German.) German uses words derived from Latin and Greek a lot in spite of perfectly usable German words meaning the same or similar things. So I'm the one to talk, huh?

"die Intention" - the intention. Perfectly German word? "das Vorhaben," or better, "die Absicht."

"die Prätention" - basically to give yourself airs. Perfectly German word? "die Anmaßung."

"die Restoration" - the restoration. Perfectly German word? "die Wiederherstellung."

Latin was the language of the Roman empire, but this impacted more the cultures abutting the Mediterranean and their "Romanic" languages - Spanish, Italian (of course), and French, for example. The basic stock of the language took in a lot of Latin words, they are at the core.

Germans on the other hand, thanks to "Herman the German", stayed mostly independent from the Roman empire and played part in eventually bringing it down. These proto-Germans had their own language to start with, and probably some form of sour kraut. So why all the Latin and Greek?

Latin is the language of many academic professions, especially law (Roman law is the historic origin of most western law) and medicine (partially with the intention you don't understand what your doctor is saying about you!). Universities in the middle ages and beyond relied on Latin as the language of exchange. Newton wrote about gravity in Latin. (And lots of other things. A busy bee, Newton was.)

These pesky academics then went on the coin all kinds of complicated words for newfangled technology that the ancient Greeks and Romans surely had envisioned at some point. Now wait. That was Jules Verne.

Television - far-away seeing. Oh wait, no, that's telescope. My bad.

Automobile - it moves by itself.

Mobile phone - movable sound.

Arithmetic - something about numbers and counting.

Algorithm... Ha! Gotcha! Sounds Greek, right? It's derived from the far more accessible Arabic...

My examples are English but exactly the same words exist in German with minor spelling differences - "Television" oder "Fernsehen", "Automobil" or simply "Auto," "Mobiltelefon" or simply "Handy" (say what?), "Arithmetik" and "Algorithmus."

So, we're a mess, huh? Germans can't speak German without resorting to Latin, Greek, English ("Computer", "Handy"), a bit of French, Italian, Yiddish... and we mangled most of it. We can't help it. Most of it we translated to our own sounds. (That will show our neighbors and compatriots what we think about their invasive words. We'll use them but make you cringe.)

Don't get me started on English. A Celtic language mostly overwritten by Anglo-Saxon Germanic invaders with Frisian partially overwritten by originally Norse French (Norman) invaders, stuffed to the brim with Latin and not even the same root word for an animal and its meat. (Eventually, veganism might take care of that one.)

Deep breath. It's fine now.

Compound words

Now that was a lengthy excursion amounting to nothing, right?

Well, get used to it.

If you use a single kanji word, you typically use the kun'yomi sound. Because there was already a Japanese word representing that concept when writing arrived. Also, this is true of most verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and some compound words (featuring multiple kanji). The tell-tale sign is typically the presence of some hiragana when writing it.

There are adjectives that don't have hiragana, like "dislike," one of the meanest little effers in the Japanese language. Its sounding ("kirei") ends in -i, but it isn't an i-adjective. It is an adjective, but it doesn't have any hiragana attached, either. It's a na-adjective that ends in -i. There are good reasons to dislike "dislike."

But in general the presence of hiragana puts you firmly in the territory of the kun'yomi readings. So a lot of common Japanese is unsurprisingly native sounds, just as English has native words for house, car/cart/carriage, like/likable, so does Japanese ("ie", "kuruma", "suki").

The category where you however will be inundated with on'yomi readings is the one of the vast majority of compound words - many of these complex concepts were imported from China. And so was the way to sound them out. Somewhat. Kind of.

In other words, Chinese fills the same role for Japanese that Latin fills (and, to some extent Greek, also) for European languages.

A useful shorthand

So, if you have to learn two or more readings for most kanji, how do you keep track? And do kanji make any sense?

Reading "Remembering the Kanji" originally raised my hopes that kanji were logical only to shatter those very same hopes over time. But it simply approached its subject matter from a limited view. At least the first book. (But that's how you're supposed to memorize the kanji, and I do call bullshit on that.)

Only the most simply kanji are pictograms. They depict the sun and moon for day and month, or the mouth, they clearly express 1, 2, and 3, etc. So I originally thought it might be useful to get a book about their origin to remember them.

Frankly, kanji (or more correctly, hanzi) changed so much since their time as petroglyphs they've become unrecognizable. Don't bother, really.

But that doesn't mean there is no sense in kanji at all, especially when it comes to the Chinese readings.

More complex kanji were built from simpler kanji - or from alternative forms of writing these kanji. People nowadays mostly learn them through memorization, but the radicals (as the parts of kanji are called) contain clues to their meaning and to their on'yomi reading.

You could go and use this as your method for memorizing the kanji, in fact. The book "The Kanji Code" by Natalie Hamilton lays out one such method. But you can have the benefit a bit easier, I think.

So, if you have a complex kanji, one part might give you the category of its meaning, and another part the sound. You can call them "signal primitives" if you want.

Here's an example:

謝 means "apologize" and its on'yomi reading is "sha."

言 is a hint to its meaning category, it means "say."

射 is a hint to its on'yomi reading, it reads... "sha!"

Here's another example:

養 means "foster" or "bring up" and its on'yomi reading is "you."

食 is a hint to its meaning category, it means "eat" or "food."

羊 is a hint to its on'yomi reading, it also reads "you."

So the original combinations might seem nonsensical at first:

"Apology" (謝) isn't a combination of "say" (言) and "shoot" (射).

"Foster" (養) isn't a combination of "food" (食) and "sheep" (羊).

But if take both these kanji as a way to tie together a broad meaning category with a sound, we do get a good result.

In fact, look at this example:

寺 is the kanji for "Buddhist temple" and its reading is "ji."

痔 means "hemorrhoids", meaning radical is "sickness" (疒) and pronounced ... "ji." (Hey, they were probably the first culture to spend long days sitting and writing.)

時 means "time" or "hour", meaning "sun/day" (日), and pronounced (you guessed it) ... "ji." (Time is indeed tied to the sun.)

持 means "hold", meaning "hand" (扌), and, yes, "ji."

峙 means "(to) tower" (like "towering over someone"), meaning "mountain" (山), and again, "ji."

Congratulations, you just learned four additional kanji in one go by looking at their components (which you do have to know) and spotting which part is the "meaning category" and which part a clue to its on'yomi sound. (Also, none of these words do in the least relate to the concept of a Buddhist temple.)

If you're interested in learning more about this method, have a look at the book. You might find it up your alley.

But even if you don't use the book, you can always look at each kanji you learn and check if the reading is "hidden" somewhere as part of the kanji already. This reinforces your memory of the original kanji's reading and helps you make sense of complex kanji.

[dracolunae]

I kinda wanna do a Senbazuru (that thing where you fold 1000 paper cranes) this year but I’m tempted to do one with dragons instead of cranes. A Sentōryū I guess?

[morphogenetic]

kind of fucked up how the word for "company" (as in a corporation) in japanese uses the exact same kanji as "society", and even the same exact readings, but just flipped in order. capitalism is society everywhere ig

[sonictalismans]

my new "hobby" is making Japanese versions of English-language songs and vice versa. not translations - well, they do get translated in the process, but I'm talking about translations that (more or less) scan to the original lyrics. it's the worst hobby ever and I love it, especially when in order to make the scansion work and preserve the meaning, I have to throw the grammatical essence of both languages in the garbage can because the first line of the song mentions an aspect of grammar and I end up with this shit:

「愛」って動詞だ 動作の言葉 恐れず息に乗って行く 衝動に動じ軽くなっていく 恐れず息に乗って行く 火に涙を、恐れず息に乗って行く 重要の夜 黒い花が咲く 恐れず息に乗って行く 黒い花、恐れず息に乗って行く 火に涙を、恐れず息に乗って行く 目は水だ、正確な鏡だ 恐れず息に乗って行く 懺悔の火に涙を注げ 恐れず息に乗って行く 闇に躓くよ

[hitnex-x]

"I don't think there's anyone that learns Japanese that likes kanji" Pls speak for yourself, autism has no limits

Why is he so small on my phone

[coolxatu]

why dont they use katakana for the furigana of onyomi readings

[bare1ythere]

Kanji is so hard to learn oh my god. oh my gjod

[cum-villain]

kanji oh kanji why are you *waves despairingly* like that

[kitsunabi]

Oh nooooooo, you can name him if you finish the quest…. But asdfghjkl; … wha- how,

I’m no good at names what if I have regrets????

[moss-sama-sideblog]

[Today's Vocabulary]

いいえ - no, not at all, don't mention it

午後 (ご・ご) - afternoon, p.m.

咲く (さく) - to bloom, to flower

地下鉄 (ち・か・てつ) - subway, metro

バス - bus

春 (はる) - spring, springtime

ラジオ - radio

いつも - always, all the time, never (with neg. verb)

まだ - still, as yet, only, not yet (with neg. verb)

よく - nicely, properly, well, skillfully, frequent, often

[Today's Grammar]

たい - want to A

Example: 私はカレーを食べたいです。

I want to eat curry.

[Today's Kanji]

間 - interval, space

kunyomi: あいだ、ま

onyomi: カン

五 - five

kunyomi: いつ

onyomi: ゴ

四 - four

kunyomi: よっ.つ、よ.つ、よん、よ

onyomi: シ

上 - above

kunyomi: あ.げる、うえ、うわ

onyomi: ジョウ

東 - east

kunyomi: ひがし

onyomi: トウ

[kanjis-yajan]

Kanji #117 虫

虫

Significado: insecto, bicho

Explicación: Un kanji compuesto por el Kanji #109 中 y el Kanji 1 一

ON: チュウ / CHŪ, #mismo Onyomi que el Kanji #109 中

Kun: むし / mushi むし = 虫 = insecto ★★★★★

Ranking de uso: ★★★★★

Jukugo:

泣き虫 - nakimushi - 泣 (llorar) + き (sonido "ki" en hiragana) + 虫 (insecto, bicho) = llorón ★★☆☆☆

弱虫 -  yowamushi - 弱 (débil) + 虫 (insecto, bicho) = cobarde, debilucho #pql

虫歯 - mushiba - 虫 (insecto, bicho) + 歯 (diente) = cavidad dental. ¿Por qué este significado? Literalmente 'diente de insecto', porque los padres les decían a sus hijos: 'Si les sale una caries, los insectos se arrastrarán por el agujero, anidarán y pondrán huevos' ★★☆☆☆ #pql

昆虫 - konchuu - 昆 (insecto, termino científico) + 虫 (insecto, termino común) = insecto, bicho ★☆☆☆☆ #palabra de anuncio

寄生虫 - kiseichū - 寄 (juntarse, acercarse) + 生 (vivir) + 虫 (insecto, bicho) = parásito ★☆☆☆☆

害虫 -  gaichū - 害 (daño, lesión) + 虫 (insecto, bicho) = insecto venenoso ★☆☆☆☆

[caramelmochacrow]

got maika's done (twas quick bc i used the same ka from yuka)

[infiniteoreos]

had a weird dream where everything was normal except i Misread(?) kaun's name and referred to it as koro-kun instead. so . 殺くん is canon now /j

[profic-mafuyu]

*BONK* NO USING CHINESE PRONOUNCIATION THIS IS KANJI /LH /NBH