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Comment by iopq | Hacker News Reader

This is just not true

let's take something very basic, the kanji 人 has two on'yomi pronunciations, jin and nin and there's no way to tell which one to use without knowing ALL of the words it will be used in

日本人 - nihonjin, so far so good 三人 - sannin, okay, I guess there's two pronunciations 二人 - futari, huh? 一人 - hitori, wat

so please tell me how I am supposed to know 人生 (jinsei) from 人気 (ninki) from 恋人 (koibito) from 大人 (otona)

even ignoring the irregular reading for "adult" there's still no way to tell those three readings apart in a kanji as basic as person

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You basically have to memorise them, like with any other language (e.g. the rules and exceptions of English spelling and pronunciation). Usually it's the most common words that have weird exceptions, because we use them enough to remember them. All the words you mention are beginner words. (There's also 人気=ひとけ, just for fun).

As far as jin and nin goes... (source: 漢語からみえる世界と世間)

jin is more about adjectives/nouns - describing yourself, and part of your identity. 日本人、アメリカ人、原始人、現代人 are all じん. 読書人（どくしょじん） is used to describe people who really love reading. Similarly 暇人（ひまじん）.

nin is more of a plain descriptor. 管理人、運搬人、苦労人、被告人 are all にん, as well as 三人.

Based on your rules, you would not be able to predict 人気 ninki, 人類 jinrui

Why is popularity "plain" and humanity is "identity"?

You just have to memorize ALL of the compounds, there's no other way

I think taking sides in this debate is pointless. Languages are always as difficult as far they are from your mother tongue or other languages you know.

Your question about the reading, though, has quite a simple answer. It's pretty obvious how to read all the examples given when you look at them as words, not a single character. Kanji does not exist in a vacuum. 人気 is "ninki" and 大人 is "otona" - no other way around it. Combination of those characters, usually, have one and only reading. To tell the truth, in English, people are unconsciously reading words as a whole, too.

Great, so what is 大人気?

if it's 大人気ない it's probably childish, but if it's not in that context, it's probably very popular

You need to finish reading the whole SENTENCE to be able to pronounce it

Not sure I agree with that. It's not difficult to notice one has "nai", other don't. Also when you read it in actual sentence you can immediately notice that something is wrong when you choose the wrong reading. Subsequent words don't add up. I am not saying confusion doesn't occur. I'm just saying it's not as big as people are painting it.

It's not always the case it's followed by nai

大人気なくてもいい means it's okay to be childish

Precisely. A couple more: 隼人 (hayato), 盗人 (nusutto).

Or we could enumerate the pronunciations of 日: 日々、日曜日 (which is top-tier insane), 日本、春日、本日、明日、明後日、今日 (take your pick which one I mean), 昨日 (ditto), 一日 (ditto), 二日、十四日〜十五日、二十日〜二十一日｡｡｡

One can marvel at its complexity - relish it even - but one cannot deny it.

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