GCSE Japanese book

Contents:
'On' reading ratio

Japanese language learning
(No pop-ups so please right-click pic and ‘open in new tab/window’ if you wish to stay in this site)

It is useful to know which of the readings are the most common and useful to learn. For each kanji, its estimated ‘on’ reading ratio is shown at the bottom, this is the percentage of times ‘on’ readings were identified in the material used to research this. The research is very useful to help give us a general picture, but caution is advised in taking these figures too literally as there are many kanji and getting accurate ratios for all, across different media, would involve a huge undertaking. We show ‘on’ and ‘kun’ icons for quick visual information based on the ‘on-ratio’ in Emergency Passport * Japanese Script as follows:

 

 

 

100 %

(0 %)

A spade represents no readings, or ones which have died and are so buried into obscurity, they did not appear at all in the survey of words. Remember the survey was limited so don’t infer these have no ‘on’ readings.    (e.g. ‘samurai’ 士nowadays takes  different kanji).

95-99 %

(1-5 %)

A diamond is for very rare readings. Don’t assume that these are not worth knowing, as there is often just a few simple ‘kun’ words, which cannot compete with the number of instances of the ‘on’ in popular compounds in the material surveyed.  (e.g. ‘kun’ marui円vs. ‘on’ yen)

70-95 %

(5-30 %)

A heart signifies a preference. Again beware the bias favouring the ‘on’ reading arising from its prevalence in compounds.. Often students will actually recognise the kun reading reading first
(e.g. onna (kun) 女vs.jo’ for women).

30-70 %

A club suggests that the readings are banded together in terms of popularity.  (e.g.  昼: ‘kun’ hiru and ‘on’ chu’u ).

This data is based on research work done by Katsuo Tamaoka et al. at Hiroshima University.

Current Page:
[Home] [Sitemap] [Japanese] [Romaji] [Kana] [Symbols] [Kanji] [Origins] [On and kun] [On ratio] [Examples] [Stroke rules] [Stroke count] [SKIP codes] [Glyph Types] [Computers] [Frequency] [Radicals] [JLPT4] [GCSE] [Glossary] [Preview book]

Up
Last Next