I noticed that some readings taught in high school are extremely rare. Currently I'm struggling to keep 伺 = ｼ in my head. I always try to learn at least one word using any new reading I learn, but here the only 3 words with this reading are 伺候, ほうし, けいし. The easiest seems to be the first one, offered by Google's keyboard as the 13th possibility for しこう, while the other 2 can't be written at all. In the dictionary all 3 appear at the 9th or 10th position among homophones. Which means that a Japanese person hearing those words will think about several homophones rather than the word with 伺.
I had 3 experiences trying to use rare Japanese words, that I had looked up in advance, with Japanese people that were more educated than average. In all three cases, after I explained what word I meant, the answer was always like "Oh, I didn't know this word".
Is there any point at all learning such rare readings? Or would it be OK to not learn them. My goal regarding reading Japanese is to be able to read blogs, Wikipedia articles, and exchange messages in Japanese. And maybe read some novels. I just got to 1000 kanjis, still a long way to go...
On the contrary, there are many kanjis which have readings that are not taught in school but are actually kind of obvious due to their meaning. 活きる comes to mind (2nd choice in Google's keyboard), but I've noticed dozens of others, without even searching for them. Wouldn't it make sense to learn those readings? Or would they be understood anyway when they appear? Does anyone ever write 想う, 総て, 勉める, 京 (みやこ), 歳 (とし), 詩 (うた), 陽 (ひ) etc anyway? They are all offered by Google's keyboard. Or could such readings appear in not so distant literature, say up to the 19th century?
