Beginner here, confused about “下” kun’yomi reading in the vocab word “下げる”.
In the lesson for “下げる” it says "Since this word has okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) you know that it’s probably going to be the kun’yomi reading, which you didn’t learn with the kanji. " and gives “さ” as being this reading.
But right before for the vocabulary of “下” it says the kun’yomi reading of this kanji being alone is “した”. So i am a bit confused which is which or why it changes for “下げる”.
While it is normal for kanji to have multiple readings, not just 1 kun’yomi and 1 on’yomi, 下 is a bit of a special case, as is 上, in the sheer amount of readings they have.
In the end, readings are best mastered as part of actual words and names. WK here focus on some of the most useful as a starting point on your learning journey.
I reset my account and last time paid few attention to rules of kun’yomi etc., so here I thought I found something that was interesting and logical, a secret trick to read anything, but after starting to tackle “大” right after making this post and the sheer exceptions (let’s use onyomi in"大した
" here because why not), I guess I will be more careful about following this rule to the letter aha.
Ah, while 大した appears to be an exception to the “kanji with okurigana use kun’yomi” rule (which itself is one of the glorious exceptions to the golden rule of Japanese: All Rules Have Exceptions, Including This One), etymologically speaking, the した comes from する and is thus not true okurigana.
Verbs like 信じる or 命じる are the same - they both use on’yomi (though the first doesn’t even have a kun’yomi in the first place) because they’re actually noun+する rather than verbs with okurigana.
Indeed if I had read more closely, I could have seen that it comes from the past tense use (cool that Wanikani also helps having a bit of insight on verbs and such!).
What is the difference between verbs in する and regular ones with okurigana exactly? All of this seems pretty advanced for my very beginner level but I like to understand the mechanism behind things.
