Do you know what ON YOMI reading or KUN YOMI reading is? Have you ever wondered how the Japanese manage to read the text without mispronouncing or stumbling? If you have been studying Japanese for some time, you should know that kanji, or ideograms, are imported from Chinese and have several pronunciations.
The Kanji in the Japanese language is divided into 2 Readings:
- On yomi (音読み) – Sound reading – These are the readings of Chinese origin;
- Kun yomi (訓読み) – Semantic reading – These are the readings of Japanese origin;
Why? When the Chinese ideograms were imported to Japan, the Japanese associated the words already used in Japanese with the ideograms, and also associated and converted the Chinese readings into Japanese ideograms.
Take the example of the ideogram for east [東]. In Chinese, it is pronounced “dong,” which was converted to Japanese as “tou,” becoming an ON reading. However, the Japanese already used “higashi” or “azuma” to refer to the east, so this ideogram ended up gaining these 3 and other pronunciations. Remember that the ON reading will always be written in Katakana, while the KUN reading will be in hiragana.
Table of Contents
Tip on how to know when to pronounce ON and KUN
It is impossible to know precisely when to use the ON or KUN reading of a word without knowing it. However, there is a tip that works for most words, but it is worth clarifying that it does not apply to 100% of cases.
To know the reading of ideograms in most cases, keep the following in mind:
- ON – It is read when the Kanji is accompanied by another;
- KUN – It is read when the Kanji is accompanied by a hiragana;
The custom is to read the entire word using the ON reading, but in some cases, it can end with the KUN reading;
When the ideograms are usually isolated, they are verbs or individual words that originated from ancient Japanese. ON reading is most often when an ideogram is next to another, because ON readings tend to have 1 syllable, or as the name suggests, a sound.
Verbs, suffixes, and prefixes usually have the KUN reading. Remembering that a reading can also vary. It is worth noting that people’s names often have other readings besides ON and KUN.
We recommend reading:
- The ideograms and kanji of similar appearance
- How to Discover the Kanji or Ideogram?
- Discovering the reading of kanji by the phonetic component
Examples of Kanji with ON and KUN Readings
Below, see how knowing this will help us identify the reading of the Japanese ideogram. And also see how this tip does not work 100% of the time.
See below the example of the ideogram that means to study and learn in Japanese:
学 ON = gakko KUN = mana
- 学校 – gakkou – School (Used a variation of on, because it is accompanied by a kanji.)
- 学ぶ – manabu – To learn (Used kun because it is accompanied by a hiragana (it is a verb);
Below we have the ideogram with the meaning of big and its ON YOMI and KUN YOMI readings:
大 ON = dai KUN = oo
- 大好き – daisuki – (Used on, because it is accompanied by a kanji.)
- 大き – ooki – (Used kun, because it is accompanied by a hiragana.)
Now let’s see the example of the ideogram for day and sun:
日 ON = nichi, jitsu KUN - hi, _bi, _ka
- 日曜日- nichiyoubi – Sunday (Started using the Chinese reading and ended using the Japanese reading.)
Below, let’s see the example of the ideogram for person:
人 ON = jin, nin KUN = _to, hito, _ri
- ブラジル人 – burajirujin Brazilian (used on without being accompanied by a kanji.)
- 二人 – futari – Two People (both used the kun reading.)
For this reason, it is important for us to know the vocabulary; not all ideograms follow this rule.
Whenever you find a kanji followed by a hiragana, remember that its reading is likely Japanese (kun yomi).
And when you come across several ideograms forming a word, its reading is usually Chinese (on yomi), but its last ideogram may be a Japanese reading (kun yomi).
Knowing this makes us more confident in reading and prevents us from getting lost when trying to figure out how to read a word.
Why did I decide to write this article?
To this day, I have never found this small and simple tip in any book or course. Knowing when the reading is ON or KUN helps a lot in learning ideograms and pronouncing unknown words. What do you think of this tip? Have you noticed that it is like this?
Leave a Reply