My main goal with learning Japanese is to speak, read and write it. On the way I also want to do the JLPT tests to proof my proficiency.
I was wondering how important is it to differ the onyomi versus the kunyomi reading of kanji. Isn't it enough to know the reading without differentiation and in which vocabulary they are used in? I found that many Japanese don't know which is which as well and couldn't find a real reason to add this complexity when learning.
I realized I can't setup renshuu.org to just ask for the readings and skip all quiz types that force me to know which reading is onyomi or kunyomi. But maybe I missed that option or there is an importance of the ability to differ between them. So I wanted to get some opinions on the matter.
Hmm, I actually had never thought about making an option where the readings quizzes are indifferent to the type of the readings being used. That's something to consider for a future update..
To your question, I don't find myself ever using the fact that something is onyomi or kunyomi in helping my day-to-day comprehension, or for anything else. The only time I actually use it is for the Kanji Kentei tests. There is one section on the actual test where you have to mark the readings in a vocab term as onyomi/kunyomi, and it is by far the lowest scored section of the test (a lot of the study materials you can purchase will have past tests, and show the average scores on each section). The score is usually around 50%.
Well, since the onyomi will typically be used in compounds, and the kunyomi when the kanji stands alone, it can help you figure out how to pronounce the kanji you're looking at.
The reason for native speakers forgetting is likely that they already have the compounds drilled so far into their brain they don't have to think about it, but for somebody (like me) clumsily making their way through a passage of text it can be a nice live saver. Of course those rules are far from 100% consistent, and it doesn't always work that way...
I wasn't aware of this, but it makes sense. Now thinking of it, it seem to help to know which reading is on and which is kun. But I found also many exceptions I am already aware of. Are there any more precise rules except compounds versus single kanji? I guess not, but one can hope.
Mostly I use it for guessing the correct reading of a term I haven't seen before, like ジャック said, but I've recently found another use - though not terribly useful, since I wouldn't want to risk embarrassing myself using it wrongly in actual conversation. Lately, we've been working on keigo in class, and I use the readings to guess whether something should have ご or お in front of it in the honorific form (since onyomi usually takes ご, and kunyomi usually takes お). Really though, if I'm in a situation where I'm using keigo, I probably will stick to words I actually know the honorific form of for sure.
@denpanosekai: The katakana is a convention in listing readings in kanji information, but in regular text it's all hiragana.
