Could anyone tell me what is the difference between onyomi and kunyomi? - Feed Post by iOozi
Could anyone tell me what is the difference between onyomi and kunyomi?
posted by iOozi
Comments 8
They are two different types of 読み(yomi) "readings"...
音読み(on'yomi) and 訓読み(kun'yomi).
The first thing you need to know is that Japanese was already a spoken language before they had any way to write it. Later, Chinese characters (kanji) were slowly introduced to Japan over the course of several centuries as a way to write the actual Japanese language. Before this, Japan had to write documents in a purely Chinese style but used special markings so that it could be interpreted in a way that made sense to Japanese people. Also, kanji was used before hiragana and katakana were invented (as these were developed from kanji).
音(on) "sound" readings are sounds similar to how Chinese people pronounced the character back when kanji were being introduced in Japan. Although Chinese only has one pronunciation for character (unlike Japanese), because it took a few hundred years to completely introduce kanji into the Japanese language, Japanese ended up with multiple sounds which where the sounds were different in later centuries and coming from different regions of China.
Anyway, even though these sounds were completely meaningless to the Japanese language (as they were sounds from Chinese language), because Japan started using kanji to write their language they started to make new words using multiple kanji put together and using the onyomi of each kanji to pronounce these compound words.
訓(kun) "instruction" or "explanation" readings are how the original native Japanese words existing before kanji were able to be written down using kanji. Kunyomi are basically actual native Japanese words themselves, but onyomi are just meaningless sounds from a foreign language.
So the original Japanese words got added as kunyomi to kanji, in order to have a way to be written down. The whole words were given to a single kanji, which is why kunyomi can be quite long, but onyomi are always only one syllable (one or two mora). This is also why a word which is one kanji written on its own will usually be read with its kunyomi, while a word which is made up purely of multiple kanji will usually be read using onyomi.
There's rather a lot to explain, but will stop because I doubt people are gonna read down this far... :P
Here's a cool link which should help a lot for understanding when to use onyomi or kunyomi:
http://lingwiki.com/index.php?title=On_vs._Kun_readings- Wish we could edit posts. Made some annoying small mistakes and some of my points don't read back how they sounded in my head. :-/
Also should have mentioned that the kunyomi weren't just assigned to completely random kanji but to kanji whose meanings matched the native Japanese word best.
Some other helpful stuff about onyomi and kunyomi was mentioned in this recent post on here too: ^^
http://japaneseclass.jp/feeds/comment/5347 
i didn't understand the first part of you are saying but thank you for the link :3- Oh nvm xD
Haha. I wouldn't be surprised if you still find it hard to understand what I was saying even now you've found my other comment.
I struggle to explain things in short sentences and often write in a weird way. Doesn't help that I made a few mistakes too, like putting that "where" in one of the sentences for no reason...
Also, I'd suggest searching for more information about it from proper reliable sources, as that information I gave is just me trying to give a simplified explanation of my own understanding of onyomi and kunyomi. I'm just another regular non-Japanese person teaching myself Japanese, not a reliable source of education. :P- (Oops, this is my other account by the way. Forgot I'd switched.) ^^;
- Lol thank you for taking the time and answering my question :D
There are some general rules that might help, which I’ve listed below, but the best way to understand all this would be to just get into kanji and make things happen .
1) When a kanji is sitting on its own, often times you’ll use the くん reading though there are exceptions to this . 2) When a kanji is combined with another kanji, and no hiragana is attached, you’ll probably be using the おん reading. This is jukugo. 3) A lot of the time, you’ll have to have prior knowledge of a particular word before you can know the pronunciation of it. Often times you can guess the pronunciation of a word / kanji based on your studies ,but in the end preparedness and experience is key.
