Readings
| Borrowing Typology of Han Characters | ||
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Pronunciation | |
| a) semantic on | L1 | L1 |
| b) semantic kun | L1 | L2 |
| c) phonetic on | — | L1 |
| d) phonetic kun | — | L2 |
Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words (or, in some cases, morphemes). From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is appropriate depends on context, intended meaning, whether the character occurs as part of a compound word or an independent word, and sometimes location within the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings. Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi (literally, sound reading) or kun'yomi (literally, meaning reading).
Read more about this topic: Kanji
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