Why 一 and 人 could be read as "hito"?

[sayasaya]

A question though, so the weed in seaweed and weed-wacker is not the same??
What’s weed-wacker?
I’m not an english native and that got me curious.

But despite that the % example help.

[sayasaya]

Thank you everyone. That cleared a lot of things up. And only then I can be more relax with this japanese studying…

[prouleau]

@sayasaya

What’s weed-wacker?

This gadget for cutting weeds.

[sayasaya]

Oh… I see…

[Belthazar]

Noone seems to have addressed this, but:

@sayasaya

Likewise 人 is a standalone? reading I think but regardless an “on” reading.

ひと is also a kun’yomi for 人. Not an on’yomi.

[sayasaya]

Oh is it kun reading???

If that’s true I guess I mixed that up…

[Leebo]

@prouleau

This gadget for cutting weed.

weeds

If you just say “weed” it sounds like you’re talking about marijuana.

[prouleau]

Fixed it.

[amagi]

As always I’ve somehow thrown this thread into chaos while trying to help.

@sayasaya, lol I assume the weed is seaweed and weed-wacker are the same. I assume whoever named seaweed said, damn that’s a lot of crap floating there. This must be the weeds of the sea.

[PDotAlex]

You can poke holes into any language like that.

Take for instance “present” - without context, you wouldn’t know whether this refers to a gift, the presence of an object or the thing between past and future.

[sayasaya]

Oh I see. It need context at times.

[bjnlien]

Don’t forget 端 - edge or 梯 - ladder.
Just to make stuff more complicated…
@sayasaya: There are more languages where the same word in text means different things and you have to figure out by context.

[Humin]

A good way to look at it is that words that are kun’yomi are spoken words far before they’re written words, so the spoken words are adapted to kanji. So despite the different kanji used, the ひと words generally follow the same pattern. In fact, this can be seen even in English where “The person who committed the crime” can be replaced with “The one who committed the crime”.

[zyoeru]

But if you a G you’re a G G G. My name is Onika you can call me Nicki.

Echoing what other people have said. Kanji have meaning on their own, sure but they’re useless in isolation. You can’t just put a bunch of kanji together they need to form words.