The Basics of Reading Kanji

This post is authored by Jonathan. Please check out his blog, Jonathan’s Japan(ese) Journal • ジョナサンの日本(語)日記, for more Japanese related articles.

For native English speakers, Japanese is not a particularly easy language to learn, nor is the kanji writing system an easy system to master. It takes a lot of time and effort, but don’t get discouraged. It takes Japanese folks years of study and experience to get it down as well, and you could argue about how “down” some of them actually have it, I’m sure. Many, if not most, native English speakers aren’t really as proficient as they could be in English, after all.

I’ll spare you a detailed history lesson, since Wikipedia can explain it far better than I, but in short, the kanji were imported from China into Japanese several centuries ago and incorporated into the Japanese language. This led to Japanese having two sets of readings for kanji: the kun’yomi (訓読み), which were derived from Japanese words that were applied to kanji of the same meaning; and the on’yomi (音読み), which are readings influenced by the original Chinese pronunciation of the character.

Individual kanji can, and often do, have multiple kun’yomi or on’yomi. As an example, check out how many readings there are for the character 行, which usually means “to go”:

On’yomi: コウ、ギョウ、アン
Kun’yomi: い（く）、 ゆ（く）、おこな（う）、くだり

Seven readings! And that doesn’t even include additional special readings for names!

“Okay, we get it,” you might say, exasperatedly. “The real question is, how the heck do I know which reading to use when I see these characters? How do I read this stuff?” Fortunately, there is a fairly straightforward method for this: the great majority of the time, you can expect that words that contain a single kanji will use a kun’yomi and that kanji compounds will use an on’yomi.

For example, the general Japanese word for “eat” is たべる. With the infusion of Chinese, the Japanese inserted 食 to the front of the word and it is now generally written as 食べる, though it can still be written as たべる. It’s the exact same word and is pronounced exactly the same–it’s simply written a bit differently. This is the kun’yomi. However, various Chinese compounds using 食 also entered the language: 食事, 定食, and 飲食, to name a few. In all of these terms, 食 is pronounced しょく (shoku), which is an on’yomi for that character.

Notice how all of the on’yomi terms are compound constructions (called 熟語—じゅくご—in Japanese)? That’s normally how things go, but this is in no way an absolute rule. In my experience, there are no fewer than two exceptions for every rule in Japanese, no matter how absolute it is said to be, and this is no different. Take 薬屋—read くすりや—for instance: this is a two-character term but it actually is read using the kun’yomi for each character. Generally, though, you can often count on two-kanji compounds taking the on’yomi reading.

So returning to 行, our kanji for “go” from a few paragraphs up, can you figure out which type of reading–the on’yomi or the kun’yomi–should be used for the following words? (Don’t worry about the readings themselves.)

1. 行く
2. 旅行
3. 行う
4. 行事
5. 現行犯
6. 行かない

There are no trick questions here. Maybe this is too easy? In any case, the answers are at the end of this article.

There’s still the matter of how to discern which kun’yomi or which on’yomi to use in situations of kanji with multiple readings of each, however.

This is generally easy with kun’yomi. The secret to discerning this is to use the okurigana–that is, the hiragana that follow the kanji in kun’yomi words.

Take 食, for instance. The most common kun’yomi for this character are たべる, くう, and くらう. When you write them with the kanji in front, they become 食べる, 食う, and 食らう, respectively, with the okurigana for each being the べる, う, and らう. As long as you are familiar with the readings that 食 has, you can pretty easily tell which word is which with a glance, right? If the okurigana are べる, then it must be read たべる! You just need to look past the kanji at the entire word before you can read it correctly.

In the case of on’yomi, things aren’t necessarily so simple because there are no obvious clues. Look at 行事, 行楽, 行脚, and 行方. These words are read ぎょうじ, こうらく, あんぎゃ, and an irregular ゆくえ. 行 is pronounced differently in each word. To be honest, when it comes to on’yomi, you just have to know the words in the question to a large extent. There are some patterns, though, and once you study enough, you’ll come to see them and be able to at least make very educated guesses for words you don’t know.

That’s where the time and effort comes in. Stick with it, though, and you will see results. If you have any tips to share, feel free to share them in the comments section.

Finally, the answers for the reading question involving 行 above: (1) kun’yomi; (2) on’yomi; (3) kun’yomi; (4) on’yomi; (5) on’yomi; (6) kun’yomi. How’d you do?

See you next time! がんばって！