Kun reading

The Kun reading ( German term reading , Japanese 訓 読 み , kun-yomi ) describes a class of pronunciation options for the Chinese characters ( Kanji ) used in Japan, most of which have several such pronunciation options (Go-On, Kan-On, Tō -On, Kun) have. In the case of Kun readings, a kanji that was taken over from Chinese in terms of its meaning was assigned the pronunciation of the word that already existed in Japanese for this term, that is, the "Kun reading" is actually a translation of the Chinese word into Japanese. This has nothing to do with the Chinese pronunciation of the Kanji, since Old Japanese and Old Chinese are not related or even similar languages. Therefore, in contrast to the Sino-Japanese (Chinese-Japanese) on reading , the Kun reading is also referred to as the Japanese reading .

Kun readings (ie originally Japanese words) are often polysyllabic compared to On readings. Long vowels and syllables ending in -n rarely appear in Kun readings, while they are often found in On readings. Voiced and palatalized consonants are also much rarer in Kun readings than in On readings.

use

The Japanese Kun reading today is mostly meant when a Kanji alone forms a whole word. In some exceptional cases there is also a separate Kun reading for groups of two or more Kanji, the Jukujikun . This is the case when a non-compound Old Japanese word could only be translated as a compound word in Old Chinese. One then writes the characters of the compound Chinese word for the non-compound Japanese.

The Kun reading is in contrast to the Sino-Japanese On reading, in which the Kanji are read approximately according to the Chinese pronunciation. Combinations of both readings are called Yutō-yomi or Jūbako-yomi . The background to the On reading is that when the Japanese took over the Chinese script, they also adopted the original Chinese pronunciation of the characters, and for the most part retained it.

In Kanji dictionaries (in which you can look up characters and character combinations that you do not know) the Kun reading is rewritten in Hiragana and thus differentiated from On readings, which are rewritten in Katakana , but this only applies in dictionaries. If the romanization is used in continuous texts (e.g. because the corresponding Kanji have become rare and the reader may therefore not know them), then Hiragana is usually used for both types of reading.

Examples

On and Kun readings

Sign / meaning	Go-on	Canon	Tō-on	Kun
京	き ょ う	け い	き ん	み や こ
Capital	kyō	no	kin	miyako
外	ぎ ょ う	が い	う い	そ と
outside	gyō	gai	ui	soto
明	み ょ う	め い	み ん	あ か る い
bright	myō	my	min	akarui
和	わ	か	お	や わ ら ぐ
harmony	wa	ka	O	yawaragu

Individual evidence

1. ^ Roy Andrew Miller: The Japanese Language. Translated from the revised English original by Jürgen Stalph. Iudicium-Verlag: München 1993, p. 102.