What is On-reading and Kun-reading?

Question

post examples

I prefer answers in Japanese letters not romaji

Answer this one too

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApPWmu8lZvaDK0Sk4W_NgXTsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080729172637AAazlMW

Answer 1

In the site below, On'yomi means On-reading and Kun'yomi means Kun-reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C...

All Japanese children learn both On-reading and Kun-reading about 1,006 kanji in elementary school by age of 12.

Avarage Japanese adult may know both OnYomi and KunYomi about more or less 3,000 kanji.

Kun-reading stands for "using Kanji (Chinese characters) with Japanese pronunciation".

With this technique, we have many advantage in our language life. We have the language duality using Kanji with Kun-reading.

We can name something using Japanese original vocablary and writing it in Kanji.

Kanji was widely used over eastern asia countries, but only Japnese invent Kun-reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cha...

Vietnamese in old days and Koreans used kanji in their own language, but pronounced kanji only in one way.

On-reading is believed Chinese way of pronunciation by Japanese theirselves, but even On-reading Japanese use several type of pronunciation unlike any other countries.

I know too many pronunciation confuse foreigners who are learning Japanese, but it's a key to master richness of Japanese language.

hope this helps.

Answer 2

1st one :

Japan has used Chinese ideos for writing because Japanese were not able to create a writing system by themself. Problem is that Japanese and Chinese are two very different languages, so when introduced Chinese ideos needed to import many Chinese names.

So Some Chinese ideos have different reading in Japanese :

- Kun yomi is the reading with original Japanese words

- On yomi is the reading for imported Chinese words

It is like if America imported Chinese ideos for using in language, you will write 日 and pronounce it "sun".

I hope it is clear enough

2nd one :

from up to down, kunyomi with hiragana and onyomi with katakana

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