Quote:
Originally Posted by chryuop
Please don't ask me which ones, because I really can't remember, but I have notice that quite a few times Raichan for the same kanji compound gives 2 different redings (sometimes both using different 音読み and sometimes using 1 音読み and 1 訓読み). Since the translation is the same, why using two different readings for the same compounds and same meanings?
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Basically, this is because Japanese does not have its own native writing system back in the days.
訓読み - When Chinese characters were introduced, they went through each Kanji, was told what it meant in Chinese, then they grabbed a word from the Japanese vocab and assigned it to that character. That's how they got 訓読み。Sometimes a Character can have many meanings hence why it can have any 訓読み readings.
音読み - The Japanese sent 遣唐使（けんとうし）scholars to China in 3 different eras and each time they landed in different areas of China. Native Japanese has a limited vocabulary and cannot express complex ideas so they want to borrow Chinese words to fill in that gap. To do that, they need to know how the Chinese characters are pronounced in Chinese (at the time). What happened is, each time they went, Chinese evolved and the pronounciation of Chinese changed slightly, so when they came back to Japan, they kept on introducing new 音読み readings with them (the latest version at that time). These days, there are 3 音読み for each character, 呉音、唐音 and 漢音 which represents different Chinese eras.
Example:
生：生産（セイさん）、誕生日（たんジョウび）
On occasions, a Chinese character may have more than one reading such as 重 which can mean heavy （重い）or repeat/cross over（重ねる）in which case there will be 2 音読み readings for the same era. じゅう meaning heavy 重量 and ちょう meaning repeat 重複.
重箱読み、湯桶読み - Also the Japanese didn't sit still, they started inventing words by mashing Japanese words with Chinese words so you started getting compound words which is half Japanese and half Chinese, like frankentein, examples include 本屋（ホンや） and 鶏肉（とりニク）.
当て字 - Occasionaly, a compound word (i.e. word that is formed using 2 or more characters) in Chinese can express a meaning that cannot be expressed by a single character alone. At the same time, there is a correponding Japanese native word that means exactly that, so what the Japanese did is they took the compound word and assigned a Japanese reading to it as a set reading.
This is fantastic quiz material and is often seen on Japanese quiz shows because there is no pattern, its total memory work. Examples include words you already know like 今日（きょう）, 明日（あした）, but it gets hairy when it gets to animal and planet names like 水母（クラゲ） and 海豚（イルカ）.
And people wonder why Japanese Kanji is so hard.