Sound vs. Meaning: on'yomi (音読み) and kun'yomi (訓読み) kanji readings in Japanese

It’s a rite of passage for every Japanese learner. You’ve spent hours with flashcards, you finally know the kanji for "person" (人

), and you proudly read it as hito...... But then you see the word 日本人 and you’re told it’s read Nihon-jin, not Nihon-hito.

Wait, what?

Where did jin come from?

Well, it comes from something called on’yomi (音読み

, the "sound reading") and kun’yomi (訓読み , the "meaning reading"), and how the Japanese language developed.

In this guide, we’ll explain what both of these different readings are, why they exist, and offer some tips and a cheatsheet for knowing which one to use in what circumstance.

A tale of two languages: why multiple readings for kanji exist

So where does this whole issue come from? It all stems from how the Japanese language was formed. You may never have thought about how languages are born, but it has a huge effect on how the language works!

Mukashi, mukashi, Japan was a country with a rich, expressive spoken language...but no native writing system of its own. Meanwhile, across the sea in China, a sophisticated writing system using logographic characters (in which symbols, not letters, represent ideas) had been in use for thousands of years. Starting around the 5th century, through cultural and religious exchange, Japan began to import these Chinese characters, now known as kanji (漢字

).

This created a fascinating situation.

When the Japanese adopted a character like 山 (meaning "mountain"), they had two options:

Instead of choosing one, they did both.

Skipping a lot of history—it's interesting, if you've got half an hour—the result of this was the dual-reading system you are currently exasperatedly Googling trying to figure out. Many characters have two ways of being pronounced in Japanese, and some monstrosities have more than ten readings. That's, unfortunately, just how it is.

The bad news is we can't change the fact that 山 is pronounced yama in some situations and san in others. The good news is that, with a few rules of thumb, you can relatively reliably guess when it should be yama and when it should be san

What is on’yomi (音読み), the "sound reading"?

As mentioned above, the on’yomi is a reading or pronunciation for a character which is based on the original Chinese sound (音 means "sound") of the character. In practice, though, the system isn't perfectly consistent for two main reasons:

As such, while these readings are based on the original Chinese readings, they often differ a fair bit.

When to use on'yomi

Primarily, on'yomi is used in jukugo (熟語

), or compound words.

Let’s look at some examples of jukugo featuring on'yomi pronunciations:

Now, to be super clear: this is sort of an "everybody just agreed it worked that way" situation. In an alternate universe, 火山 might be pronounced as hiyama, using the kun'yomi reading for both 火 and 山, while still retaining the exact same "fire mountain = volcano" meaning. For better or worse, though, the established vocabulary word is kazan, and nobody says hiyama.

Another tricky point: Sometimes a single kanji will have multiple on'yomi. This is because characters were imported from different regions of China (with different dialects) and during different historical periods. For example, the kanji 行 can be read as:

You don't need to memorize that 行 can be read as <gyō>, <kō>, and <an>. We'll talk about how to go about dealing with kanji with multiple readings a bit later in the article. For now, just know that most kanji you encounter will have multiple ways of being pronounced.

What is kun’yomi (訓読み), the "meaning reading" ?

The kun'yomi is a kanji reading that is based on the original indigenous Japanese word for a concept. Or, to be clear:

The pronunciation yama existed in Japan long before the character 山 was adopted, so yama was kept.

When to use kun'yomi

Just like on'yomi, kun'yomi has its own specific use cases.

Here's a few examples of standalone nouns that utilize kun'yomi readings:

And then some verbs and adjectives:

Remember these 4 rules to know whether to use onyomi or kunyomi

So, good news and bad news:

(By the way, you might have noticed that I said “on'yomi” and “kun’yomi” above, but use “onyomi” and “kunyomi” in this section header. Good eyes! The proper English transliteration is “on'yomi” and “kun’yomi” with the apostrophe, but you'll often see “onyomi” or “kunyomi” online. Don’t get tripped up!)

[Rule 1] Two or more kanji together? Think on'yomi.

This is the golden rule and your most reliable guide. When you see a compound word made of multiple kanji, your default assumption should be that it uses the on'yomi reading for each character.

[Rule 2] A single kanji by itself? Think kun'yomi.

This is the other major rule. If you see a kanji standing all by itself, functioning as a complete and standalone word, it will almost certainly use its kun'yomi reading. These are often the first words you learn in Japanese.

[Rule 3] Kanji with hiragana attached? It's kun'yomi.

If a word consists of a kanji character followed by okurigana (hiragana), you can assume they’ll use the kun'yomi reading. Think about it this way: if a word is "finished" with native Japanese characters (hiragana), it makes sense that the root of the word uses the native Japanese reading, right?

There are thousands of such words in Japanese, but to give a few examples:

If you just remember that these okurigana-ending words almost always use the kun'yomi reading, you’ll be in very good shape.

[Rule 4] Names and places? Welcome to the wild west.

Now things get a bit more complicated.

When it comes to names and places, rules pretty much go out the window.

Both personal names and place names often don’t follow the standard patterns. They can use on'yomi, kun'yomi, or even special readings used only for names (called nanori).

For example:

There’s really nothing to do but learn these types of words on a case-by-case basis. The good news is that Japanese people themselves get tripped up by this, so most official forms or documents will include furigana (small hiragana readings placed just above the kanji) to explicitly show how a given name or place is pronounced.

When the Rules Don't Apply (And Why)

While the first three rules will get you pretty far, they're unfortunately not ironclad.

To show what I mean:

These mixed readings have special names:

You don't need to memorize these terms—just know that such words exist. As we'll talk about down below, sometimes kanji just aren't pronounced as you'd expect them to be. For this reason, it's better to focus on learning vocabulary words than it is to memorize the various ways a given kanji could possibly be pronounced.

Common questions beginners have about on’yomi and kun’yomi:

With the big rules out of the way, I’m sure you’ve still got some questions. I’m here for you! Let’s look at some common questions.

The best way to learn the kanji

I'm admittedly making an assumption, but chances are you're here because kanji are proving troublesome.

Having been at this for over 10 years, if I could go back and give my New To Japanese self a bit of kanji advice, I'd tell myself three things:

You can apply those lessons however you wish, but here's how we built Migaku around them:

Our Migaku Kanji Course introduces a system for remembering kanji: you'll be shown certain components that occur across multiple kanji, then learn a simple story that helps you combine those components into characters. Rather than learning all the kanji, you'll focus on the specific subset of ~800 characters which occur in the ~1,500 most common words—the words that enable you to follow 80% of Japanese Netflix.

Two weeks after starting the Migaku Kanji Course, you'll start the Migaku Japanese Academy. This course teaches you the most common 1,500 Japanese words and ~300 grammar points. It's special in that you learn these words and grammar points by learning short practical sentences, and each sentence introduces only one new word.

As you learn these words, you'll naturally acquire the on'yomi and kun'yomi readings of the characters. By the time you finish, you'll have enough of a Japanese foundation to continue your learning by exploring content you find interesting, and you can apply our same kanji system to remember new characters as you encounter them.

We've reviewed a lot of kanji learning books, and you're welcome to try them out—but I feel pretty comfortable saying that Migaku's system is, by far, the most efficient and least troublesome. As much as I wish I had a more professional way of saying this—it kinda just works.

Learn Japanese with Migaku

Want to learn kanji readings? Just learn Japanese vocabulary.

For those of you who just zoomed right through the entire article without reading anything—the key takeaway is that this isn't about rote memorization. It's about learning vocabulary. If you learn vocabulary words, and you know the kanji within those words, you'll pick up the kanji readings for free.

But how do you learn vocabulary?

After you've built a sizeable enough vocabulary base, you might find yourself able to read words confidently... but not even know if the reading you're using is the on'yomi or kun'yomi! And that won't really matter. So long as you know the words that character is made up of, you’ll be well on your way to understanding Japanese.

Good luck, friend!