>what's the point of onyomi and kunyomi? Matt, have some little thought experiment. Suppose the island of England be located not in her current position but in the Pacific Ocean, at the position of Japan, and suppose ancient English people wanted to write their speech using some writing system. They would very likely use Chinese characters because it was the only way. Roman alphabet was far away, there only were Chinese characters. This is like when you are cast away in a desert island; you would use everything there whether it is logical or not. First, you probably write "I am Matt", like 亜衣 亜目 馬特(a/yi a/mu ma/te) using Chinese characters as a substitute for the alphabet to indicate sounds. That was what our Japanese ancestors did as 万葉仮名 (See the picture below) https://pm1.narvii.com/6948/b176cb636e83a431e691312625f524a46fe0a974r1-638-1064v2_uhq.jpg But you would be tired of writing lots of strokes again and again, and you would want to simplify it, like 我　是 　馬特, writing 我 and pronouncing "I (ai)", 是 as "am". That is as same as the Japanese idea of Kunyomi, such as 私（watashi), 米（kome), 剣（tsurugi). Or you would want to reduce the number of strokes when you write a character and would come to using a cursive. That was what we did in かたかな and ひらがな. (See the pictures below) https://edusup.jp/files/%E3%81%B2%E3%82%89%E3%81%8C%E3%81%AA_%E3%81%82%E3%81%8B%E3%81%95%E3%81%9F%E3%81%AA-2.jpg https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcT_mWe3JxB3oszqU1d4v4vGP9uVrSIkiCugLnar03RATIhd_HHv And you would possibly write 取、捕、盗、採、撮 and would pronounce all in one way, "take". Sharing the same sound and basic meaning, slight differences are expressed only by characters. Again that is what we did in Kanji and Kunyomi. 取る、捕る、盗る、採る、撮る as Toru 放す、離す（and surprisingly 話す) as Hanasu I don't know Japanese is a language difficult to learn or not. But I am sure it is a very interesting language to learn.

As a fellow learner, I'd say that there is no point. Languages are not logical — they grow organically. The Japanese borrowed a foreign writing system (from the Chinese) and used it to write Japanese. For words borrowed from Chinese, they used an approximation of the Chinese reading they were familiar with (whatever Chinese dialect was in relatively close contact with Japan and relatively high in prestige at the time). For native Japanese words, they used the Chinese character corresponding to the same (or a similar) idea, but kept the Japanese word. I haven’t studied Japanese in a million years, but if memory serves me, the more basic words tend to be original Japanese, while the more technical words tend to be borrowed from Chinese. It’s a difficult writing system, but it’s worked for hundreds of years.