掲示板 Forums - how important is it to know Onyomi and Kunyomi?

Hi!

I'm having a great time studying Japanese. For me, it's rather easy to remember the main meaning/reading of Kanji by using mnemonics. I noticed that it's not easy at all for me to remember the Onyomi and Kunyomi readings associated with those Kanji.

So I was wondering how important it is to study them at all. If my goals were to be: passing several JLPT-levels (say, until N3/N2 or so), being able to have a simple conversation when in Japan and reading some (beginner level) Japanese books, would you recommend studying Onyomi and Kunyomi at all? Or could I achieve those goals by just knowing the main reading/meaning of around 1000 Kanji?

Thanks for your advice!

(Wrote this up before I realized that you're the same person who asked in Discord, so this is just general advice for anyone I guess )

What makes learning kanji readings difficult for most beginners is that they seem like arbitrary information when you don't have any words to connect them to. The solution to that isn't to refuse to include readings in your study -- it's to acquire more vocabulary.

As it says in the thread Anonymous123 linked, you can't get around learning readings. Avoiding them will make learning unnecessarily difficult for you later and harm your overall confidence when engaging with the language. But how you go about studying readings and to what extent you prioritize vocabulary to achieve that is up to you and what helps you learn best. Renshuu has a lot of options for customizing what and how you study and what questions you'll be asked. You can:

• Simply disable reading vectors from your kanji schedule and depend completely on vocabulary to passively teach them to you (this works for some people but YMMV; personally, I'd find this way more frustrating than studying readings alongside)
• Make a separate kanji schedule for studying readings, that only contains kanji that have appeared in your vocabulary or ones you have a good handle on the meaning of already
• Disable individual kanji readings that don't appear in any words you know, and re-enable them when you encounter them in a word (click on a kanji reading and a toggle will show up; unchecking it will prevent Renshuu from asking you questions about that reading in kanji quizzes without needing to completely disable reading vectors)
• Whenever you learn a new kanji, make a point of reading the related vocabulary and add words for any unfamiliar readings to your vocab schedules
• Study using matched kanji-vocab lessons, or create your own. If you study kanji using the Kanji Kentei order, Renshuu already has vocabulary lessons for each KanKen level (search for "kentei" or for Renshuu-made lessons in the Lesson Centre)
• Enable the "Always show kanji for hiragana questions" setting for your vocab schedules, so you're still being exposed to the kanji while you're studying vocabulary readings
• (If you have Renshuu Pro) Enable the "finish the vocabulary" and "kanji crosses" question types in your kanji schedules to build stronger connections between the readings and your vocab

Once you start seeing the patterns in them and have enough context from your vocabulary studies, readings become a lot easier to acquire and you'll eventually even be able to predict the readings of kanji you've never seen before. It just takes time to build up the foundation to get to that point, so be patient with yourself and keep on experimenting with ways to study that will keep you motivated to understand how to read kanji, instead of frustrated with the apparent randomness of it.