Vocabulary groups with the same kanji and pronunciation

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I was wondering if there is a way to sort the vocabulary from a particular level by the kanji and pronunciation they use. So that you end up with, for example, 4 or 5 words with the kanji for person that is pronounced as じん (British Person, French Person, Foreign Person, Friend) and another set for ひと (Alone, Person, Woman, Man).

I am at the very beginning but while it’s relatively easy for me to remember the strokes and meaning, it’s ridiculously difficult to remember their pronunciation. Usually when I get something wrong I don’t even know if I used kun’yomi instead of on’yomi or used the pronunciation of a completely different word or kanji.

I started to copy the words into my notebook (because once I write something with my hand I already remember at least 50% of it), but I’d love to have it more structured in terms of pronunciation. I realise I can sort it myself manually, but it would take even longer than simply rewriting it :slight_smile:

Maybe somebody has already done such a thing? I know there are dictionaries and apps that present kanji in this way, but the problem is the words contain kanji that I haven’t seen yet and it would be perfect if I could practice only with the kanji that are familiar to me, that is from the level (or tier) that I’m currently studying.

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I don’t think there’s a good list out there, since it’s not obvious how one collect these efficiently. Probably your best bet is opening up an online dictionary and just putting in 人 to get a list.

But just mentioning, that learning Japanese words has this interesting pattern quite often, that you start by nailing all the meanings and not remembering any readings, because readings themselves are new to your brain, while putting together, that tree+tree=forest is quite easy. But as you go along with your journey, you’ll eventually run out of new onyomi readings, and words will have way more abstract meanings that barely relate to their composition at all. And since quite a few of the more complex words are jukugo, meaning made up of multiple kanji often using the onyomi readings, you might notice, that remembering the readings is the easy part, and remembering the meanings is what turns into the much harder challenge.

Also, don’t worry much about onyomi vs kunyomi, there are pretty decent rules of thumb for when a reading will be kunyomi, and when it’s using onyomi. In general, for single kanji words and words that use kanji related to bodyparts (hands, feet, eyes, etc), it’s the kunyomi reading, and for most other words it’s onyomi. There are only a rare few exceptions, and those are common enough usually to remember. Your examples are:
~人 being a suffix for a person from somewhere using じん: British Person, French Person, Foreign Person
Jukugo words (compounds): Friend
Single kanji words: Person, Woman, Man (Iast two, because in e.g. 男の人 , の is a grammar pattern meaning “of”, so a “person of [type] man”)
Exceptions: Alone

The usual problem is words having multiple onyomi readings (so 人 would be にん or じん), which is usually difficult at the beginning, but there aren’t many common kanji with two common onyomi readings (another examples would be 下(げ/か)), you’ll learn most of them in the first 10 levels, and then never need to deal with those again.

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Thank you for your reply!

I’ve come across a website that does the thing I wanted. Word Search - Kanshudo You just need to write the kanji and the reading you want separated with a colon.

I toyed with the idea of copying the first five from the list, but the problem is I don’t really want another pool of words. At least not at this stage. I already use far too many apps, books and websites.

I also figured that I can simply open every kanji on the Wanikani website and use ctrl+f to look for all words with the readings I want. So, I started copying the words from the first 10 levels under each kanji (grouping them according to the reading they use). I hope that I won’t be needing it after a while because it’s a rather tedious process and I can’t believe I will be able to sustain it for long. But for the time being it has to suffice :slight_smile: