Troubles still continuing...

[robertsmax818493]

Hello everyone!

The last thread I had didn't necessarily answer my initial question, although it did help me understand the concept of On and Kun reading.

I've been learning Kanji, as mentioned before. I decided to what Zelg said, and just go with the flow. But my problem consisted as I studied more.

小

This Kanji has one On'Yomi pronunciation, and 4 Kun'Yomi pronunciation. I decided to 'go with the flow' but then I red some exaples with this Kanji.

小川　　(o-gawa) According to the site I'm learning from, this means "small stream."
小鳥　　(ko-tori) This means "small bird"
小さい　(chi-sai) This means "small"

So my question is: How do you know when to use お、こ、or ち？
How about in other Kanjis?

I appreciate all of your responses.

[Teabag]

Hi robertsmax818493 san,
Chinese language is my native language. I think the structure of Chinese characters and words is quite similar to that of the Japanese one. This is how we learn a new word.
Let's first take "小鳥" for example.
There are 2 characters in this word: 小+鳥
Both of the characters can also work together with other characters to form a new word.
i.e. 1. 小雨 light rain
2. 白鳥 white bird

So the most important thing is for you to know the meaning of a single character. In your example, 小 means small. What other characters it might be put with, they all carry the concept of "little," though they might be pronounced differently in different words. As a result, it's essential for you to learn a "word" not a single "character."
The moment we work on a single character is probably when we learn how to write it correctly.

Japanese is more difficult as other than 音読み"onyomi," it also has 訓読み"kunyomi."
The more you read, the more you learn. I was once (or many times) very frustrated as what I had learned just didn't come to mind. One day I realized that they were simply hiding somewhere, though they might not come to rescue when I need them. Then, I study them again, so they become part of my active vocabulary.

My advice is take every single character as what in English word they call "a lexical morpheme" but learn by words (putting various morphemes together).

[cloa513ch2629]

ちいーさい
あの　読み　は　しょう。

Look through jisho.org.

Its mostly pronounced こ　or ご　
Most of the rest of the time its
しょう　referring to children　mostly but many other references.
ちいさい and its derivatives are about time is ちい。

As far as all Kanji then its very difficult but there are guide rules which are not much use for　小　

[community.japanese]

robertsmax818493-san, Teabag-san, cloa513ch2629-san,
kon'nichiwa

Reading kanji is problematic even for us Japanese (for ME, actually )
Like Teabag-san said, knowing the meaning is more important than reading it properly.
As to 小, it's read as しょう or こ in most of the case and reading it as お is a rare case.
When we read it as ちい, it's always accompanised by さい or similar "conjugating part"
because it's a part of an adjective ちいさい
So, like I advised in the other forum (sorry for being very late, but I've just posted a comment),
remembering a kanji as a part of words would be a good idea and would help you.

It's actually the rest of the part in words or other kanji/hiragana that makes a word with that kanji
that decide "how to read this kanji".

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com