Yomi Readings are kicking my butt

I have been going through the reviews for the past few weeks and I’m realizing I no longer know which is being used when. I’ve inverted everything in my head and it’s a complete mess. I’m thinking it’s ni when it should be futatsu and sometimes everything just swaps around.

My understanding is:

  • Kun’Yomi is when a Kanji is on its own.
  • On’Yomi is for combined vocabulary.

But numbers are an exception, so they go with Kun’Yomi all the time? What if they’re with kanji, or with hiragana (does the latter make the hiragana be called okurigana)?

I’m sorry for rambling here, I feel like steam is blowing out of my ears like an overheated charcoal train!

Any resource that dumbs this down a lot and then goes in real good depth to help me straighten things out. Especially regarding the exceptions relating to numbers?

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Numbers have two systems, sometimes they go with the chinese readings, sometimes with the japanese one. For saying just the number itself and past around 20, you’ll for sure use the sino japanese system, いち, に, さん… For other cases, you’ll use the japanese system, ひとつ, ふたつ, みっつ

here’s the tofugu article on the system, but tl;dr, below 10 and for 20 you’ll encounter one system, for other cases the other system

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Haha, it’s a good heuristic early on but it doesn’t work all the time :smiley:

At the end of the day you just have to learn it.

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People are overanalysing it early on. Your brain will figure it out and it will makes sense.

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Yomi Readings are kicking my butt

Just FYI, み actually means reading, which makes your title seem funny…

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Yes, standalone kanji normally do get read with kun-yomi, but there are some exceptions. 楽 is another that comes to mind. I wouldn’t consider numbers that exceptional, as they are commonly used enough for them not to be too much of an interference. You’ll pick up patterns as you study more, fret not.

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Thanks everyone for the replies. I think I needed a bit of encouragement to simmer in this madness until I can absorb it and make it make sense. Cheers :smiley:

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It sounds to me that you need to spend some time learning vocabulary. kun-yomi, on-yumi doesn’t really matter. You still need to know the counting system even if you learn it via romaji.
hitotsu
futatsu
mittsu
etc.
as well as words like
ichi gatsu
ni gatsu
san gatsu
etc.
by trying to learn the kanji at the same time it makes it more complex. But as others said it should click eventually.

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In terms of WK, I’d say just keep going. Eventually it hammers into your brain. eventually your brain stops arguing with you and you stop arguing with your brain, and you find yourself with the right answer. Well. Sometimes.
But it does get easier I think.
Part of all this is training your brain to remember things the WK way and that takes a little while.
hang in there and good luck

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