Japanese Kanji Pronunciation is More Art Than Science

Pronouncing kanji right every time takes a lot of practice, but knowing the basics will get you far down the road.

A kanji is just a Japanese character or symbol. Kanji literally means “Chinese letter”, because they actually originated in China several thousand years ago. The Japanese didn’t have a written language, so they adopted the Chinese characters, most likely around the 6th century.

The two most important words to know about Japanese kanji pronunciation are onyomi and kunyomi. An onyomi literally means “sound reading” and is usually a single syllable that is given to a kanji when it’s written next to another kanji. For example, when you have a word that is made up of three kanji, chances are that the word is made up of three syllables. These one-syllable kanji pronunciations sound eerily similar to the Chinese pronunciations because they actually share the same linguistic roots.

A kunyomi is usually a longer kanji pronunciation that actually resembles a whole word (as opposed to just one syllable). Generally, if you see a single kanji not surrounded by others, you pronounce its kunyomi and not its onyomi.

A Japanese kanji (again, which is just a character) usually has one kunyomi and a couple of different onyomi. But a kanji can have no kunyomi, or 5 different onyomi. A whole word can be made up of only one kanji, or six kanji stuck together. It just depends.

After World War II, the Japanese language moved to a simpler type of reading system, called shinjitai. 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 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. As Japan mixes with other countries more, it has been slowly moving away from kanji, but the challenges of Japanese kanji pronunciation don’t show any signs of going away soon.

Philip Rozek invites you to soak up more about the Japanese language by reading the full article at http://www.how-to-learn-japanese.com/japanese_kanji_pronunciation.html You can also learn all about the Japanese Genki textbooks, Japanese keigo, and more. He’ll also let you pick from his full array of tips on how to learn Japanese

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