Altastrofae

Japanese 101 here:

Crazy thing that blew my mind when I first figured this out.

We'll use this kanji as an example:

山

It means "mountain" or more literally, it directly translates to "when the earth is put up high"

By itself, it's pronounced "Yama"

Now, lets say you want to talk about a specific mountain, say... Mount Fuji. You would write it like this:

富士山

Notice, the last Kanji is the same one as above, meaning mountain, since we are, obviously, referring to a mountain. Much like in English, in Japanese it is specified when someone is talking about a mountain. You wouldn't say "Everest" you'd say "Mount Everest"

The way of reading the Kanji just above is "Fuji-san" with the first two characters being "Fuji" and the last being "san" or mountain.

"But wait, Astro, I thought you said this (山) was pronounced 'Yama'"I can hear you all shouting through your screens.

Well, I did say that, but there's this weird thing with Kanji that can be really confusing...

Some Kanji have 2 basic pronunciations. Some only have one. Some have 10 or more that you just have to know when and how to use.

Yeah, the Japanese writing system is FUBAR.

The two ways are called onyomi ("sound reading") and kunyomi ("meaning reading")

Onyomi is used typically when the Kanji is used with other Kanji, as above. Sometimes this isn't always the case, and even native speakers break this rule where onyomi should be used. The onyomi comes from the original Chinese pronunciation of the word, as the Japanese writing system was introduced by the Han dynasty of China long ago back in medieval Japan. For awhile, the Japanese only used Kanji, then later some guy thought of this new thing that only made things more confusing.

Moving on from that, Kunyomi us typically used with stand alone characters, as the speech flows much more smoothly with Japanese pronounciation this way. It would sound very strange not to do so and you may even confuse a person.

For example, the Kanji above that I showed you, "yama" (山). If you walked up to a Japanese person and said "yama" they'd immediately be able to deduce that "Oh that means mountain, okay."

However, if you walked up to someone and said "san" they'd be all confused being like "okay? That could mean mountain... But it could also mean acid, or this guy could be referring to the suffix "-sama" or..." There's just a lot of things that could mean, so you just have to ask yourself if you use onyomi, is the meaning here easily inferred?

And as I said above, some have even more pronunciations. One Kanji in particular came to mind, and I actually had to Google all the official pronunciations.

Here's what I found. I only knew afew of these:

"生, which is read as sei, shō, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, i-kasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru, and ha-yasu, totaling 8 basic readings (first 2 are on, rest are kun), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct"

Hope y'all found this interesting, have a good day everypony, and have a blessed Litha coming up, a happy Father's day, and an excellent Pride Month!

Ja ne! ^^