Some kanji can have like 12 different readings.

You aren’t going to just memorize all the readings for all of the kanji. Don’t worry about trying to do that.

You can learn the two main readings through something like wanikani, but ultimately, you will learn vocabulary words as individual words.

Learn compounds then the readings will come naturally over time.

So basically kanjis in vacuum don’t have a reading at all. All readings that are listed there just comes from words this kanji is used in. So what you probably should do is add a couple of different words that use this kanji, with different readings. And learn those words. This way, you will kill two birds with one stone: learn the reading of the kanji and a new word for your vocab. Practicing “nen” and “toshi” for year without understanding where’s it used as nen and where as toshi, is quite useless.

Most people in this sub swear by “learn vocab only” with no dedicated Kanji study. I don’t agree with that, but even learning Kanji separately, it shouldn’t be done in isolation, but with vocab to reinforce and know what reading to use where. Most Kanji have two readings, some have like 10. Some have like a dozen meanings depending where they’re used. Learning them in isolation is not going to do much good because when you’ll cross them in the “wild”, you won’t have any idea what reading to use, and a lot of the time you’ll also misinterpret what they mean.

You’ve learned 日 is “day” or “sun” most of the time. You’ve learned the readings. You come across 三日月. How do you know which reading to use, and what the hell is 3 days moon?

Even something like WaniKani, which is a dedicated Kanji learning site/app, doesn’t make you learn a kanji and all its readings in isolation. It’ll make you learn the kanji common meanings and one most common reading, then teach you a bunch of words with that kanji and the readings for those words.

1st and 1. In English you don't learn the character 1 is read "fir" and "one", then why are we doing that for japanese? Kanji study, at least in my opinion I am not a teacher or anything, is only a way to learn the meaning of a Kanji and how to write it.

Learn vocabulary not kanji out of context. Even if you memorize all these readings, if they're without context you won't know how to apply them. By learning vocabulary your kanji knowledge will passively grow over time.

You need to eventually learn them all. Whether or not you want to learn them all right now is a different question.

It is widely agreed that rather than learning 木 is pronounced もく or き, it is better to learn vocabulary with the kanji as a proxy for learning the readings. So instead you'd learn that 木曜日 is pronounced もくようび and means "Thursday." And that 木の実 is pronounced きのみ and means "nut" or "berry."

As other people have said, don’t learn individual kanji readings. Just learn how to read words and eventually you’ll end up being able to guess a good amount of readings through intuition (assuming you’ve seen the kanji before in other words)

As others have answered your question, I won't beat a dead horse, but rather correct something else:

On'yumi e Kun'yumi

Onyomi (音読み) and kunyomi (訓読み). Yomi as in 読み, because it means to read, because these refer to how the characters are read.

Just as others have said, studying individual kanji to learn the readings is an inefficient way to go about it. Its good to learn the stroke order if you practice writing, or to studying the radicals or meanings, but if you want to understand the readings, studying words is much better.

To answer your question, yes you will need to know all the readings, but memorizing two different words (same kanji but different reading) is more useful than memorizing 1 kanji with 2 readings (especially because you won't know when to use which reading).

kanji are like letters in english - they don't have a singular pronunciation outside word context

learn words

One thing that may help you is the notion of sound components. Many characters are called "phonosemantic" where half the kanji references the meaning and the other half references the Onyomi, though this is not always obvious in Japanese.

For example, the character 建 "To build, to establish" has an onyomi of ケン. It has a derivative character 健composed of 亻 (the component form of person 人) + 建. It means "healthy" roughly and also has an onyomi of ケン. Here 亻 is the semantic element and 建 the phonetic.

Not every kanji is like this though, such as kanji that originate as pictograms or ideograms: 木 (tree) was a pictogram. 建 was an ideogram showing early construction methods, but has been corrupted to its current form.

Don't put too much time into it. Especially the onyomi readings. It'll be far more useful to learn actual words and slowly get used to seeing the various readings, rather than trying to memorise the most common readings which may or may not be used in any given situation.

This kanji thing sounds scary until you know that there's a language in which many characters have like six seven readings

It's called "English"

I agree with the advice to "learn words instead" but I want to give some specific examples of how spelling actually works:

木(き) is the physical substance "wood." Or can also mean "tree." Usefulness: moderate. It's a word you need to know but it only comes up in some contexts.

樹(き) is the same word but when it's spelled this way it specifically means "tree," the plant.

木(もく) is the "wood" phase from Chinese philosophy and folklore, the 五行(ごぎょう). It can mean "blue or green hues" or "Jupiter" or "wood-day, one of the days of the week," and probably other things. Usefulness: The day-of-week "Thurs." meaning is very useful. Otherwise low.

Note: in longer words もく often does refer to the physical substance. 木製(もくせい) "wooden, made of wood" and 木材(もくざい) "lumber" and so on.

空(そら) is "sky," pretty straightforward. Easy to learn. Usefulness: moderate to high.

空(から) is "empty" implying "there could be people or things in that place." Spoken language may use 空っぽ instead, maybe more intense, more casual, or simply easier to hear. Usefulness: moderate.

空(あ)く is "become empty or open" and 空(あ)いてる "be empty or open" and again this is "empty" or "available" like an empty seat. The "open" meaning is "allowing things to pass through" like an "open window." Usefulness: moderate to high.

空(くう) is "emptiness," almost never used outside of idioms like 空に睨(にら)む - "stare off into space." Usefulness: very low.

空(うつ)ろ alternate spelling of 虚ろ meaning "a hollow" or "cavity." Usefulness: low, you'll only see this in old literature or if the author is showing off.

日(ひ) "day" or maybe "days" - either way, a period of time with particular qualities. Can mean "sun" in idiomatic phrases but otherwise people say 太陽(たいよう) instead. Usefulness: high.

Key point: The pronunciation and meaning of Japanese characters aren't very definite. Full words and short phrases are much more definite than the individual characters.

In my experience knowing the pronunciation of individual characters begins to happen automatically once you know several thousand words. Once you know 20,000~30,000 words you'll be able to guess the pronunciation of unfamiliar words, sometimes. Even native speakers ask each other or open a dictionary.

Learning isolated kanji, specially through readings, doesn't do a lot for you. Even if you memorize EVERY SINGLE READING FOR ALL 50000+ KANJI (or just the 2-3k ish that are actually used) you still wouldn't be able to read a single word.

Instead, you need to create a solid vocabulary foundation first, then you go through the steps of studying kanji in its roots.

For example, you'll see the word 木の葉, it's worth learning the reading (このは), learning that it means "tree leaves" and that, in that context, the first kanji means tree and the second one leaves. In the future, you start caring about knowing that 木 might read き or モク or all of the abstract meanings that the kanji has, depening on the word, because now you have the right foundation of knowing words that use either reading, or some that use none of the listed readings at all, such as 木綿 (もめん/cotton).

That looks like the Kanji Study app. 

You can click through to each and it will provide a list of words that the kanji is used in and this enables you to see how the reading changes (some kanji have a wide array of readings with some word specific). 

I see that you're using Kanji Study, good choice ! At first kanji are gonna appear on their own in SRS and then you're gonna get vocabulary. I'd advice faving specific words related to your studies for each kanji, so you're not learning them in a vacuum and get words that you're also encountering elsewhere

This is a not very good way to learn the pronunciation of the kanji, unless you either already know them and use this for writing practice or want to learn what they mean in your native language.

It's much better to learn how to pronounce the kanji in context, ie. by reading or listening.

Pick up core 2k/6k or kaishi 1.5k on anki, or use memrise community courses.

Read this: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/

The advice here is great-I'm also struggling with the Onymoi/Kunyomi thing a bit.

One thing that confuses me is the advice generally is to try to understand the Kanji in context, and don't worry too much about whether it is Onymoi or Kunyomi. But I'm starting to use the app Renshuu, and its Kanji section literally asks you whether a series of Kanji definitions are Onymoi or Kunyomi with no other context-is this particular exercise just not that useful?

I say look at a word list and try to find one word that you already know that uses each of the readings. If a particular reading is only used in words you haven't encountered yet, shelve it for later. When down the road you come across the word in the wild, you can learn the reading then. Otherwise you might be spending time learning esoteric/archaic readings almost never used, when your early learning time can be more efficiently spent elsewhere. 

What app is this?

Learn words, don’t just memorize all the possible readings in a vacuum.

As a general rule of thumb (many exceptions), single-kanji words and words with kanji + hiragana will use kun-yomi readings, while multi-kanji words will use on-yomi. There are many exceptions, but it helps when guessing readings.

For example:

日 = ひ = day

日の出 = ひので = sunrise

毎日 = まいにち = every day

May I ask what app is this?

personally speaking i’ve found knowing the most common reading (as dictated by wanikani, actual results may vary) just makes it easier to remember vocab. In situations you know the reading, reading the word can help to recall the vocab meaning. In situations where you encounter a vocab that has a different reading outside the main ones, i find it easier to remember BECAUSE it’s different, almost like it being outside the norm causes my brain to remember it more.

Since this seems to be the consensus, How are you guys learning the kanji as vocabulary? Any apps or methods?

My 2 cents from my experience from JLPT N5 to my ongoing studies for N3-Learn words, not readings. Trying to figure out when which reading is being used is not worth the effort. (I know I'm not the first person to say this.) Building vocabulary is very helpful for building confidence in Japanese, as far as I can tell.

One of the things I really like about Renshuu is that if you have a kanji deck, it can be set up (and I think it's the default now) to only quiz readings you've seen in vocabulary. So you might initially learn 人 as the stand-alone word pronounced ひと. Then shortly thereafter you learn a few words that use じん, and you learn that, and get them right, and the 人 card fades to the back of your SRS pile as you get it right. Then you learn the first word where it's にん, and the card pops back up until you get that reading into your head too.

(You can customize it -- the dictionary it's running from is a little inconsistent as to whether rendaku is listed as two different readings or one reading + rendaku, and not all super-irregular things that could be considered readings are listed. To continue the example, 人 only has ひと, じん, and にん -- things like 一人 being read as ひとり are considered an irregular reading for the whole compound and not splittable into two readings for 一 and 人 separately, so you can only quiz that from the vocab card for the whole word, not the kanji cards.)

So I am familiar with this app.

It's good for familiarizing yourself with semantic meanings for Kanji and for understanding some back-of-the-envelope things about the Japanese language, but it's kind of backwards for actually learning the Japanese language at your level, because you don't know the context yet for why you would use hi vs ka.

Onyomi will generally be used for the same/similar reasons that English would rifle through for Greek or Latin. You want to make a word like proton, or hydrology. The problem with this, is that Chinese is not a monolith, you're borrowing pronunciations from Tang Poetry, or from early Southern Chinese Dialects.

Multiple kunyomi will generally be for standalone use, but they also appear in native compound words. For verbs, you'll be clued into the different kunyomi by mandatory kana following. Compare: 上る「のぼる, to climb」 with 上げる「あげる、to raise」. In other cases, it will be grammatical, like using it as a counter word versus using as a standalone.

Maybe consider trying out WaniKani. The first three levels are free and you get a decent amount of Kanji, readings, vocabulary, radicals and mnemonics there. I feel like it gives you a great mix of actual vocabulary and Kanji meanings. And it helped me understand why those are not the same.

Here's how I deal with kanji in my study- I never learn any more readings than are used when The kanji appears as a word on its own, in isolation (like how you're mostly gonna see "水" read as みず or "行く" read as いく). The way I learn alternate readings is exclusively as they appear in compounds. This way, I'm not learning the character as having lots of readings, I'm learning the readings as a component of a word.

Think of how you learn to spell in English. You don't learn how letters are pronounced in every possible permutation, you learn the most common and regular pronunciations, and when new ones appear, they're how that letter is pronounced in that word. Like t usually makes the /t/ sound in stop, time, tomorrow, but makes a /ʃ/ [sh] sound in election, patient, or the /tʃ/ [ch] sound in tune and attiTude (in Commonwealth dialects of english at least, not so much New world dialects)

I also tend to sound out the word to remember the stroke order of the kanji, kind of like you would use phonics when learning to read in English, but for writing the kanji. Not sure how useful it ACTUALLY is that part, but not howdy do I FEEL like it does somethin.

I personally only learned the on-yomi when learning kanji as they generalize to more words. You will learn the kun-yomi when learning vocab.

This is why it's better to just learn words. You'll pick up kanji readings with each word. If you learn all the kanji first you still can't read Japanese so it's kind of a wasted effort imo. Only dedicated kanji practice worth doing is for writing if you want to write.

I think learning the most common onyomi is handy.

So English sort of has a similar system going on. English has native vocabulary but also vocabulary from French and Latin, as well as some from Old Norse.

You can think of this as similar to how Japanese has both native Japanese and Chinese-derived words. What I mean to say is that in English, you have to know that human, man, corpse, body, person, and people are all words with different origins and slightly different meanings that all have to do with a roughly similar concept. Just looking at them, most of them look nothing alike and you wouldn't necessarily know their meaning. For example you wouldn't know that corpse comes from French corps meaning "body".

In Japanese, there are lots of readings for 人. It could be り, ひと, にん, じん, と, depending on the context. But they're all written the same way, 人.

Focussing on memorizing pronunciations isn't as useful as learning the words that are being written. If you don't know that 人間 is にんげん, "human", no amount of single-character memorization will help you differentiate it from possibly じんげん or whatever. Thr writing system exists to serve the spoken language, not the other way around. Trying to learn to read before you even know what you're reading is going to suck.

Every time you learn a new word with a new pronunciation for 人, you can add it to your list to study from. Until then, stick with whatever pronunciations you have for words you already know.

You don't need to learn all the pronunciations of a kanji, just learn the general meaning with the "kanji flashcards" in quiz settings and then learn complete words by studying with books, readings etc and you'll learn just the right pronunciations you need to know. if you see a word that uses a specific kanji you can always come back and edit the keyword that the app uses by default for a better one that fits the word you are learning. Learning every single pronunciation is a waste of time, Imagine you learn the 10 different pronunciations of a kanji and then you only end up using 2 of them and on top of that of all the words you know only 3 use them 🫠

Use vocab words for the kanji you are learning as it will help you form what readings you should try, especially when there are a lot of them.

Some chinese pronunciations are from different times in history, language evolves over time so if you take the same kanji 300 years apart from chinese it could be pronounced differently in those different circumstances. And then for the native japanese words, most of them existed pre-kanji and were given a kanji because of their meaning. Some of these will work out cleanly and only have one Japanese pronunciation, but some will have many because that simple kanji concept can cover a variety of native words.

No one else mentioned, so I will. Get rid of the romaji or you will never learn the kana.

One kanji has many different readings, and many kanji have same reading. So Kanji is too difficult to me.

The ones with more then 3 readings you’re just gonna have to learn with the words they come with 生きる(いきる)　生える(はえる)　生まれる(うまらる). Some others it’s very easy. 食 as a verb meaning “to eat” it’s read as た in 食べる when it appears in a multi-kanji word always pronounced as しょく in 朝食　(ちょうしょく). Here you can also see 朝 which is read as あさ but in multi-kanji words it’s read ちょう. This is a fast way to be able to read long strings of kanji. 日本語能力試験作成者 にほんごのうりょくしけんさくせいしゃ

It’s best to just see them in a compound, but if you want to learn them individually I’d just learn the most common one or two pronunciations and then when there’s an exceptions it should be easy to remember. Of course there are some kanji that have lots of pronunciations that are used often so just try not to dwell on those and they’ll come naturally.

Figure out which readings are the most common and learn those, then once you have the kanji itself down learn vocab that uses that kanji and pick up the other readings from that

Learn kanji just by reading.

my advice is not learning both readings nor intonation at first. just try huge input and youll just tag along with the correct pronunciation eventually. this is just going to tire you out

where'd you get this neat pronunciation chart from?

It's a bit complicated, but for all the kanji you showed, you should learn all of their pronunciations.

I don’t know if this app is made for new learners or something, but a few pronunciations are missing, like 木　ボク　モク　き　こ