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Hello. ^^ I’m fairly new with Japanese, and I’ve gotten to the first couple Kanji lessons, and they’ve really confused me, especially くんよみ and おんよみ. I’ve read over the lesson a few times, and I’m still confused when to use each one. The lesson says “When a Kanji is sitting on it’s own, you’ll often use the くん reading”, but then Koichi goes on to show me that this 七 by itself is しち (the おん reading), among other examples. Could someone clarify where and when to use each? It’d be greatly appreciated.
ありがとうございます!
The trick is to learn words rather than kanji in isolation – you wouldn’t teach someone English by saying “C is pronounced K some of the time and S other times” and then just leave it at that. Once you get a fair bit of vocab under your belt, you start to get a pretty good feel for which readings should be used in any new words you encounter. 七 is a bit of a weird one, anyway – its readings are fairly interchangeable.
The issue with “kanji use on’yomi when they’re in words and kun’yomi when they’re alone” is that there’s a ridiculous number of exceptions. Of course, the “every rule has exceptions” rule also has an exception: kanji with attached okurigana (hiragana tacked onto the end of adjectives and verbs to indicate conjugation and whatnot) always use the kun’yomi.
AnonymousFor some reason my throat feels parched.
Thank you, Joel, that makes a little more sense. I’ll try to keep following along with the lessons with that in mind and see if it starts to get a bit easier.
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