Hey! I've been reading a lot since January and I feel like I'm making a lot of progress.
I feel like I can learn anything about the language if I just keep reading. Except for one thing.

And that is when to read 入る as いる or はいる, 開く as あく or ひらく, 止める as やめる or とめる。

There are probably a few more, but I guess those are the most common. So whenever one of those words comes up, I generally pick what sounds cooler to me, while knowing that I'm probably wrong.

I don't think that's gonna get any better even if I read for the next 10 years.

Now I can read any amount of explanations on what's the difference between やめる and とめる, I'm sure there are enough exceptions that I'm wrong at least some of the time... and therefore reinforcing a wrong reading.

Any tips on how to handle these words? I'm guessing more exposure to spoken Japanese, but it's just not as fun, because I don't understand half as much as when I'm reading. I just feel like I'm making the most progress while reading, and therefore I want to spend my time reading and not trying to listen.

Do you feel like it would be okay to just ignore those words for now, and tackle them at a later stage when I'll have an easier time understanding spoken Japanese? (I'm thinking if I can read really effortlessly, it has to become a lot easier to develop listening skills)

As a rule, I have context sentences for all my Anki vocabulary. When I'm making a new card, I do try to pay careful attention to whether or not 開く and 入る have the right furigana on the back side, and add correct readings for numbers and so on, as a step towards solving this problem.

Also, of course, any listening/reading you can do with matching dialogue and text will help with these patterns.

You could also check the dictionary entries for each word and add example sentences from there to your vocab or sentence SRS.

I agree. Using sentences in Anki is a good way to go. If you learn to read the words in sentences, rather than as separate words (or worse, stand-alone kanji), you'll eventually associate the right sounds with the words.

By the way, most kanji frequently use two readings, and many use more than that. 　Just in the examples you mentioned, 入 is also read as にゅう, and 開 is also read as かい, both in fairly common words. But if you learn them in sentences, you'll be able to keep them straight. Most of the time, at least.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:By the way, most kanji frequently use two readings

Yes, but the examples the OP was citing in particular are those that are indistinguishable even in context. The only way to know the 'correct' reading is to know what someone -would- say in that situation, as opposed to にゅう for 入　which only appears in compounds. That is 入る can only be いる or はいる, never にゅうる.

Those three sets of words (開, 入, 止) are, I think, somewhat unique in that respect, although the reverse often happens, ie, かえない could be any number of words with any number of kanji spellings.

I have a similar problem with numbers, although those -are- deterministic, if only you know the rules for every counter-word you might encounter, which is only challenging in being tedious to study.

There's also a somewhat larger set of kanji-compound words where there's more than one valid reading, sometimes with an very similar or identical meaning. I don't really know how to cope with -those- very well except by paying attention to what I hear.

apirx Wrote:Hey! I've been reading a lot since January and I feel like I'm making a lot of progress.
I feel like I can learn anything about the language if I just keep reading. Except for one thing.

And that is when to read 入る as いる or はいる, 開く as あく or ひらく, 止める as やめる or とめる。

There are probably a few more, but I guess those are the most common. So whenever one of those words comes up, I generally pick what sounds cooler to me, while knowing that I'm probably wrong.

I don't think that's gonna get any better even if I read for the next 10 years.

You're wrong, it will (I have experience with learning languages without formal study, and it works just fine). There's no way you're gonna confuse iru and hairu after 10 years of reading.

You could sprinkle in the occasional audio book. Or watch some television. Or meet ONE Japanese person. But I would bet anything that if you learn the rest, it would be impossible for you to not also learn this small part of Japanese. I don't think you could avoid it even if you tried. If reading is working for you (as in you're enjoying the process), I wouldn't change a thing.

Eventually you will have to familiarize yourself with a more casual/spoken style of Japanese than what you find in novels, but that's such an easy, natural process that it's not worth worrying about.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:By the way, most kanji frequently use two readings

Yes, but the examples the OP was citing in particular are those that are indistinguishable even in context.

It sounds like we're then talking about transitive/intransitive verb pairs ( http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ti_list.html ). And doesn't the context help to distinguish them?

彼はドアを開けます。　[あける]
ドアが開きます。　 [あく]

In which case sentences could help to memorize the correct reading. Or am I missing something?

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:By the way, most kanji frequently use two readings

Yes, but the examples the OP was citing in particular are those that are indistinguishable even in context.

It sounds like we're then talking about transitive/intransitive verb pairs ( http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ti_list.html ). And doesn't the context help to distinguish them?

彼はドアを開けます。　[あける]
ドアが開きます。　 [あく]

In which case sentences could help to memorize the correct reading. Or am I missing something?

OP was talking about something more difficult than transitive/intransitive. He's talking about sentences with, for example 入る, like "気に入る" and "手に入る", where you don't know whether it's "いる" or "はいる" (unless you already know those phrases).

Thanks for clarifying that with examples. I see the problem now.

So couldn't this be addressed with Anki?

Front of card:

このシャツは気に入る。

Back of card:

このシャツは気[き]に入る[いる]。

(Use the Japanese add-on and it'll appear with furigana.)

You could probably knock out those three kanji with a few sentences each. What do you think?

[Zgarbas]

It's not so much of a reading problem as a vocabulary one =).
開く「ひらく」 and 開く「あく」 may be written the same, but they have slightly different uses。In such cases J-J dictionaries (goo is my favourite) are there to clarify. ひらく would be the only one that can be used for books, paths, etc. ひらく can also used for events.

Usually when something has multiple readings then there are considerable differences between them (there are some exceptions, of course). Sometimes it's formality levels (明日　can be read as あす、あした、みょうにち, from informal to written formal). Sometimes it's collocations&expressions (気に入る). Other times it's different words which happen to share a kanji&okurigana because Japanese loves to confuse. The only thing you can do is look up the differences and try to keep them in mind to prevent forming a bad habit.

Stansfield123 Wrote:You're wrong, it will (I have experience with learning languages without formal study, and it works just fine). There's no way you're gonna confuse iru and hairu after 10 years of reading.

You could sprinkle in the occasional audio book. Or watch some television. Or meet ONE Japanese person. But I would bet anything that if you learn the rest, it would be impossible for you to not also learn this small part of Japanese. I don't think you could avoid it even if you tried. If reading is working for you (as in you're enjoying the process), I wouldn't change a thing.

Eventually you will have to familiarize yourself with a more casual/spoken style of Japanese than what you find in novels, but that's such an easy, natural process that it's not worth worrying about.

I don't know about this. Obviously if it's a really common word like 気に入る you can pick it up through hearing it and not misread it as はいる, but if they're less common words they may not have furigana in any texts so you can pick up the reading of it wrong. I know that whenever I have to read something out loud I find out a bunch of stuff I learned wrong (just recently I had to correct 主とする; I had always read that as おも but apparently it's しゅ instead -- being a mostly written form I hadn't heard or noticed it spoken or read aloud).

Maybe you can read it both ways because u can definitely read it as omo to suru

The examples in the OP are very common so I wouldn't worry Abt it

Have you tried subs2srs? It is a program for creating cards from tv shows or movies. Depending on the settings, you get cards with text, audio, image, and even video.

Once you have processed a few episodes, you can search for the collection for the words you have difficulties with and learn those cards. The audio will ensure you get the correct reading and the image/video will tell you the context it was used in.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:Maybe you can read it both ways because u can definitely read it as omo to suru

he person correcting me was a Japanese professor. I'm pretty sure that 主 is read おも mostly in 主な, and that if it's とする it's しゅ.

Daijisen has for しゅ:
３ 中心となること。また、そのもの。「住民が―になって活動する」「情報交換を―とした会合」

I see omotosuru in google results too. I guess one should chiebukuro it maybe

Just for posterity's sake (and my own learning) :
主とする [実用日本語表現辞典]
「遊戯的性格を主とする」の「主とする」の読みは「しゅとする」ですか、「おもとする」ですか。 [知恵袋]
Certainly not the most referenced Chiebukuro answer I've seen, uh.

Regarding the original question, I feel like most of the time the problem of picking the correct reading will be reduced to those two cases :
- properly differentiating transitive/intransitive verb through context (which is doable almost 100% of the time; after a few thousands of pages read I have yet to find a sentence where I don't know which it is between はいる and いる...).
- having enough vocabulary, especially for those idiomatic expressions (慣用句, like that 気に入る; have a look at 慣用句 [Wikipedia], there's a cute list of idioms with body parts). To me 主とする can perfectly be treated as vocabulary/idiom to sentence mine in Anki.

And I wouldn't necessary trust a google search for 主とする since it's used primarily in formal written style, so while most Japanese people would know what it means they may not have heard it spoken very often or used it in speech themselves. If おもとする were a common phrase to hear in speech I would say that you can read it either way but since this is primarily written formal style I think you should stick closer to what is prescriptively correct.

But isee other sites saying it can be omotosuru and people using omotosuru ( they write in hiragana) Are these wrong ?
I googled 主とする "おもとする"

I only see 289 results with "おもとする". It's either bc it's wrong and those people used it like that or nobody writes it in hiragana

Nm I got clarity. Those people are using it wrong lol
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/thsrs/13722/m0u/
I love goo dic for stuff like this. It gives you explanations and examples.

Context, context and more context. And by context I mean not just a short sentence to play around with, I mean the situational context - the clues are more often than not there. If you have been reading for several years - this should by now be almost a non-issue for kanji for commonly used verbs. All of their most commonly occuring forms would be down pat by now to even a light reader (general non technical Japanese) of say 5 years experience.

I don't think there is any more detailed answer to this - that is not to disparage the problem since it is a very real one. We have all had the same problem, and we must all have had the experience a few steps down the road whe we look back at a kanji or set of vocab that we previously got confused over and thought 'what was all that about?' Read more, speak more, listen more and the more familar with the way that Japanese is actually used on a day to day to basis, and these confusions should lessen.