May 2009Archive

Role of Onyomi

The two most important words to know about Japanese kanji pronunciation are 音読み(onyomi) and 訓読み(kunyomi).
The Onyomi kanji idiom plays a very wonderful role in sentences of the newspaper and the book.
It is because the Onyomi kanji idiom can adequately express the atmosphere of the scene and hero's feelings by only two characters.

喝望(Katsubou):
The idiom by these two kanji has a deep meaning.
You aspire after water when very thirsty, don't you?
This is kanji idiom where "Someone aspire after something seriously" is expressed.

It is very troublesome in the conversation though the Onyomi kanji idiom can demonstrate the power on the sentence.
There are only a few dozen syllables in the Japanese language, so there can be dozens or hundreds of different kanji that have the same onyomi, which can be really confusing at times.

Demerit of Onyomi kanji idiom.

A Japanese kanji has some kunyomi and a lot of different onyomi.
It means the idiom that consists of only two kanji has the idiom with many different meanings.

信念(shin-nen)[=New year] and 信念(shin-nen)[=Belief].
The pronunciation of these two words in Japanese is quite identical.
But, these meanings are quite different.

Look at a lower table, please.
Each meaning is different though these kanji idioms have some same pronunciations respectively.
Such a kanji idiom exists innumerably in Japanese.

The pronunciation of Japanese people family name is also very confusing.

Onyomi kanji	Pronunciation	Meaning
新年	shinnen	new year
信念	shinnen	belief, faith, conviction, confidence
The pronunciations of these five kanji idioms are all "こうかい(kou-kai)". But, of each has a quite different meaning.
後悔	koukai	regret, repentance, remorse
更改	koukai	renewal, change, reform
紅海	koukai	the Red Sea
黄海	koukai	Huang Hai
公開	koukai	en, public, exhibit, be on display, release
航海	koukai	a voyage, a cruise, a passage
Four kanji idioms of the following are the pronunciations of all of "こうえん(kou-en)". The 2nd and the 4th are kanji idioms with the meaning that looks like but they are different meanings. Perhaps, many Japanese will make a mistake in writing this kanji idiom.
公園	kouen	a park, a square
講演	kouen	a lecture, a speech, a talk
好演	kouen	good acting, an excellent performance
公演	kouen	a public performance, a presentation
A young Japanese might not be able to write these with kanji though four kanji idioms of the following have respectively a quite different meaning. The kanji idiom the 1st and 2 is "Kanji idiom that the Japanese sometimes forgets." And, the kanji idiom the 3rd and 4 is kanji idiom not frequently used in daily life.
紹介	shoukai	introduction
照会	shoukai	an inquiry, a reference
詳解	shoukai	a detailed explanation
商会	shoukai	a firm, a company
All except the fifth kanji idiom are kanji idioms frequently used in daily life. But, most Japanese people will not be able to write these all with kanji immediately. There are many Japanese who cannot write kanji because the sentence making on PC and the cellular phone has increased.
完成	kansei	completion, perfection
歓声	kansei	a cheer, a shout of joy
官製	kansei	government manufactured
閑静	kansei	quiet
管制	kansei	control, censorship
慣性	kansei	inertia
感性	kansei	sensibility, sensibilities

But.

When we do not write kanji for a long term, we forget kanji.
But, it was not deleted from the memory and is "State that has been temporarily forgotten."
The memory returns when we see that kanji.
The memory returns when we hear the pronunciation of that kanji.

 

 

How is the Japanese listening to the kanji idiom with the same pronunciation?

Such a question might have arisen to you.
The answer is this.

• The Japanese is guessing it from the content of the conversation.
• The Japanese judges and guesses by the accent of the word.
  

Therefore, if you say only the Onyomi kanji idiom, the Japanese can't understand the meaning.
There is sometimes a case where the meaning of the Onyomi kanji idiom cannot be understood even if the Japanese talks mutually.
In that case, the Japanese questions that person on the meaning of the word.

Please examine the meaning carefully if you do Kanji TATTOO.

 

 

Bytalk about Japanese Kanji of Hararie

After World War II, the Japanese language moved to a simpler type of reading system, called shinjitai.
Kanji that the penmanship was very complex and difficult was used in Japan of pre World War II.
Some of the original characters were made a little simpler, but most important was that kanji became used somewhat less, and the simpler and easier hiragana syllables were used more.
That simplification took a lot of the blunt memorization and practice out of being able to read words properly.
More recently, some people have wanted to get rid of kanji completely and just use the simpler syllables of hiragana.
Your ardent study might exceed a Japanese kanji ability because the Japanese who cannot write kanji is in the increasing tendency recently.
(This is true. )

 

 

By Hararie

 

 

think that Japanese ONYOMI and KUNYOMI are troublesome existence for the foreigner.

 

I introduce the page that I found by "Yahoo answer".

Question

Kanji reading:
Onyomi and Kunyomi?
I have recently began learning kanji, using a nice little program on my mobile, KanjiQ.
However, a problem I have come across is that I have no idea of the difference between Onyomi, what I've come to know as the approximation of the chinese, and Kunyomi, the Japanese.
I have three questions:
1) Which do I use, and when?
2) There are multiple kunyomi and onyomi for some kanji, how do I distinguish between them?
3) What does the single line [slightly longer than a minus sign) mean in readings?
[Other information:
At present, my Japanese is basic.
I can read hiragana and katakana.]

 

Best Answer

- the "-" has 2 cases:
+ if u see it in Katakana , it it replaces for these elongate sounds that written in katakana by:
-"aa" = "a-"
-"ii"= "i-"
-"uu"="u-"
-"ee"="e-"
-"oo"="o-"
+if u see it in Hiragana (specally book for forein learner) it guides u to couple the letter in the right way of that word.
Ex:
with a word "kinen" -if write "ki-n-en" u read as :
kin'en (means :
no smoking ) -if write "ki-ne-n" u read as :
ki'nen ( means :
anniversary).
*number 1 &2 question:
-read this site:http://www.dsfy.com/JapaneseLanguageNews...
-nomally, if see two kanji above, u ll read u as onyomi, and only one kanji , u read as kunyomi(but also have some words contain 2 kanji read as kunyomi ) Source(s):
study japanese

 

I see...

The two most important things to know about Japanese kanji pronunciation has onyomi and kunyomi.

 

Because Japanese was originally a spoken language and very different from Chinese, modern Japanese is a hybrid of classical Japanese and classical Chinese pronunciations expressed in Japanese phonemes. This is reflected in the names of the "readings" for kanji: readings that come from classical spoken Japanese are called kunyomi, and readings that come from classical Chinese are called onyomi　　 [ From Japanese Online ]

 

For example, this is "sound" of kanji.

This kanji has three pronunciations.
This kanji has one Onyomi and two Kunyomi.

Onyomi is mainly used on a kanji idiom.

The meaning of the word is understood by reading the compounded kanji symbols aloud by Onyomi.

But !
The Onyomi idiom kanji has the troublesome problem.

It means that there is many "idioms of the same pronunciation."

"The troublesome problem" is that quite a lot of kanji idioms with "Same pronunciation by Onyomi" exists in Japanese.

 

It explains it at the next chance.

 

By Hararie

Japanese has three kinds of characters.

The Japanese alphabet is usually referred to as kana, specifically hiragana and katakana.
And, there is also Kanji.

It's these two writing scripts that comprise the some 100 kana characters that are used to write and pronounce every sound in the Japanese language.
The character resembles a wave that is curved.

This is an infantile education teaching material of "Shichida Institute for Educational Research" of Japan.

A photograph is expanded by click.

 

 

 

 

 

 

hiragana syllabary is used to write word endings and japanese words, replacing the kanji if the kanji is not widely known or the readers are children.
It can also be used alongside kanji to indicate its pronunciation.

Japanese children study this "hiragana and katakana" first.

This photograph is the lesson scenery of the "Tanihara elementary school" of Tokyo.

A photograph is expanded by click.

Well, the topic is returned to the hiragana.

Thus any Japanese word can be written in a way that can be read without having to remember how the word is pronounced.

 

Kanji has thousands of kind of characters.

This system of writing is quite complex as it consists of many thousands of characters, and thus a mastery of it would involve a mastery of Japanese itself.

One thing is for certain is that learning the kana becomes easier the more you associate mnemonics with each character.
In time, learning both the alphabets will become an easy task that you can easily fulfill.