Japanese Kanji pronunciation help

How would you.... ok, lemme give an example as to what my problem is here:
Say you are in japan, you know japanese pretty well, but you see a kanji that you havent seen before, would it be just like seeing a word that you havent seen before in english? would you just be able to sound it out? if so, HOW?! what lets you know how to sound it out? If you know what I mean please help! :dizzy2:

 

On signs and things they have hiragana above the kanji to spell it out I think.

 

It is like English. Take it from a perspective of English. Like say you see the word anamonapia (I know I spelled that wrong).

Only in Japanese if you see a kanji you've never seen before then you'll have to ask cause if it's joined by other kanji then sometimes it could look different than by itself.

I'm not even Japanese so this is hard. I'd like to know myself how they can be read without the hiragama or katana at the top to guide you.

 

hm..that's a hard question. Most of the time..like in novels, magazines and such, they dont give hiragana for their kanji, which is extremely hard for gaijin to read. The fact is that, there is no way of telling how a kanji is sounded, unless u know it, or hear it.

kanji has two different sounding methods: onyomi and kunyomi. One is the reading based on its chinese roots, and the other is the one based on pure japanese language.

I think the only way to know, is to get your knowledge of kanji well down pat.

 

AIEEEEEEEEEEE...

 

When it gets really fun is where the Kanji have more than just 2 readings, I know of a few characters that have 5 or more, and then there's 'special' readings that only appear in certain compounds. Honestly though, most things you'll read in Japan (depending on the audience) will not have furigana for the 2000 or so Kanji the Government recognizes as requisite for fluency. The difference is in stuff that's targeted at younger audiences... Manga, for example. A lot of Manga (most, if I understand properly) has furigana over the majority of the kanji. Some even have furigana over their english words (a real treat for us english speakers, it's great fun imitating the Japanese pronunciation, at least for me)

The real fun with Kanji starts at names. Names have another set of readings, there isn't one for each kanji, but there's a lot of 'em. Oh yeah, that's right, even if you know a lot of Japanese, names'll still still throw you for loops, take some native speakers for example. Take native English speakers for example... we have trouble with location names and people's names often enough when they're spelled out in our alphabet.

All this considered, you still can glean a meaning from a Kanji if you know your radicals well enough (the pieces that make up the more complex kanji) Well.. if you're lucky you'll get the right one... sometimes those radical combinations get to be somewhat abstract.

And just so you know, I love the Japanese language!

Lecture man UK out,
-UK
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mmm.... 76 pound multilingual legal dictionaries....

 

Holy crap. I believe you when you say that. You all seem pretty sure of what you're saying... Gah, names are worse than I thoguht... well the reason I made this thread is cuz I bought a reading/writing dictionary thingo, and if i want to know what a word is that I see on TV or something, I dont know how to look it up, oh well. Guess im S.O.L. without some furigana, eh.... ok, well thanks everyone for your help.

 

Well, I have friends who taught themselves their current (quite high) level of japanese skill by reading manga with several dictionaries at their side (a pair of twins, so yes, together, I assume)

Hang in there and feel free to post questions about specific kanji and such, I've got a few nice kanji dictionaries, plus, there's a few good ones available for free at various websites.

-UK
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frendly neighborhood lecture man