Hints for remembering pronunciations for 大, 人, and rendaku-ified pairs others

Maybe a bit of a vague question: Basically I’ve noticed that a sizeable chunk of my errors in reading are in kanji that have a pair of pronunciations (for examples, たい versus だい or じん versus にん). I understand that some of these are due to rendaku and there are rules of thumb but nothing infallible to guide learning them. Any other strategies for recalling these? I try to make certain I say them out loud several times and use them out loud in a phrase or a sentence when I learn them so I can at least get a notion of what sounds correct. Any other ideas?
Thanks!

I’m currently writing a cheat sheet for 大, because it’s starting to trip me up as well in reviews. These are probably no rules that apply in general, but only pattern that I found that apply at least within the WK items.

I’m not finished, but it might perhaps help that if 大 is not the first kanji in a vocab, it always uses its だい reading.

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Excellent, thanks - that’s exactly the sort of little nudge I’m hoping for. Sometimes I just get really hung up between pronunciations and my brain tells me that it isn’t going to help and I need to figure it out myself… LOL

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We can probably put 御大 (おんたい) back under the rock I just found it under, since it’s not a WK word :slight_smile:

Apparently an abbreviation from 御大将, so the 大 is in some sense first character in a two character compound there.

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Yeah, as I said, I assume that these patterns aren’t rules (it’s hard to find rules in languages anyway), but at least it will make the WK experience less painful :slight_smile:

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@PapaYeti If you like, I can ping you when I finish my “cheat sheet”, I plan to open a thread with it as I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one struggling with 大, 人 etc.

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Best way of learning this is the sound of the word. Listen to its pronunciation, say it out loud while reading it, repeat. With any luck when you read it, the sound will be in your head, and you’ll just have to type it out.

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@NeoArcturus
Yes please, that would be lovely. Thank you!

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