Use context. That's something your brain has practiced since you learned to speak. There's linguistic research to show that our brains are constantly anticipating ahead when someone is speaking, getting words ready that fit in the context.

Besides the wider context (the conversation is about death so it must be 死期, etc) there's also the immediate local context of the verb which commonly goes with the word. I'm sure we have this in English too but definitely Japanese...

シキを迎える→死期
シキを悟る→死期
シキを味わう→四季
シキを高める→士気
シキを上げる→士気
シキを執（と）る→指揮
～のシキ下において→指揮
etc etc

It's hard to come up with many real-life examples of where a word, in context, can be ambiguous in speech but would be transparent in writing because of the kanji. It does happen sometimes, but learners tend to exaggerate this because (as I said earlier in the thread) we learn kanji much earlier in the language learning process than native speakers usually do. So to us it looks like everyone must depend on the kanji a lot to figure out the words, when really it's just that *we* need the kanji because we lack the years of experience with the language that help native speakers know which words are meant. The situation isn't helped by native speakers who support this idea when they really don't know what they're talking about (native speakers are about as good at explaining how they use language as a human is explaining the biological process of how they walk).

(Obviously highly specialized, rare, or field-specific vocabulary can be an exception to this, but even there the people in the field who are familiar with the vocabulary are fine. For instance, the word ぼうちゅう when talking about old manuscripts is a common word in the field and most people would know it, but without more context than usual it might not be understood by a non-specialist. On the other hand, the kanji representation of 傍注 would be a lot easier for a non-specialist to figure out. This is one of the only times where the writing system really does help in a way that roman letters or other languages don't, but this isn't something that happens every day.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's hard to come up with many real-life examples of where a word, in context, can be ambiguous in speech but would be transparent in writing because of the kanji.

I have long wondered if there are any examples of audiobooks in which the text has to be altered (however slightly) to avoid ambiguity.

As it happens, the ゴブリン王の期間 example from before provides a similar example in English: "The Goblin King's Organ" is ambiguous in writing *and* speech ... chortle.

anotherjohn Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's hard to come up with many real-life examples of where a word, in context, can be ambiguous in speech but would be transparent in writing because of the kanji.

I have long wondered if there are any examples of audiobooks in which the text has to be altered (however slightly) to avoid ambiguity.

I somehow doubt that, but it's not impossible.

anotherjohn Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's hard to come up with many real-life examples of where a word, in context, can be ambiguous in speech but would be transparent in writing because of the kanji.

I have long wondered if there are any examples of audiobooks in which the text has to be altered (however slightly) to avoid ambiguity.

As it happens, the ゴブリン王の期間 example from before provides a similar example in English: "The Goblin King's Organ" is ambiguous in writing *and* speech ... chortle.

I've read a few fantasy books (in English) where deliberately ambiguous phrasing was used to throw a character (and the reader) off course. Can't think of any titles, but it's not particularly uncommon. The lazier version is 'character overhears some others whispering and takes the few words he catches out of context' (in fact, it's so lazy and cliched, you're almost guaranteed for it to be completely different from how the character interprets it).

The difference being that the phrasing was intentionally ambiguous or context was intentionally removed. I don't think a natural language would have continued use of ambiguous phrasing within context.

As for audiobooks... That's a good question, but I don't think so. I don't have any lucid reasoning behind this opinion, just my guess. They might change phrasing for other reasons, but I don't think this kind of ambiguity would be one of them.