crihak
June 12, 2019, 7:11pm
9
Hilbert90:
In fact, it’s always reasonable to give the onyomi when shown an isolated symbol, which is why I initially said I felt the leniency should be in the other direction. I do get what people are saying, though.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding here, but since many single-kanji words use the kun reading (hence your worries), I’d say it’s not always reasonable. Since it means you’ll pronounce the word wrong…
Maybe this analogy with single-letter English words is helpful?
The letter “I” can be read in various ways depending on context, including あい and い.
The word “I” can be only be read あい.
If WK would ask you for the reading of the letter “I” neither あい nor い is incorrect, so it’ll just shake the screen at you until you answer the one it expects.
On the other hand If WK would ask you the reading of the word “I”, answering い is incorrect and it should and will fail you for it.
In the same way, while にち and ひ are both valid readings for 日 as a kanji . You cannot pronounce it にち as a word .
EDIT: i.e. you can’t say today is a good day by saying “今日はいいにちです”
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