As I start to study kanji in conjuction with learning more vocab after having learned how to read hirigana and kantakana the most confusing is the multiple meaning behind them. It almost seems like its contextual based and I was curious how to know when a kanji will sound like one phrasing or another. for example ichi 一 when will it sound like itsu イチ;. or the other example hito ひと 一 イチ; イッ; ひと and ニ; ふた.
when do you recommend getting into kanji as I have started to learn a lot more vocab and most learning videos seem really bland or just a repeat of something else. Im really trying to create a strong base by increasing my vocab so I can increase my immersion by reading books and listening to podcasts but this has confused me and I cant seem to find any answers online as to when reading it would you know the difference.
I was also curious on how I should remember them or do I need to know all variations that one kanji could mean like the three examples for ichi?
一 always means one however we read. The meaning is almost always the same ,but the way to read is different depending on the combination with the rest of the word . Do you know onyomi and kunyomi ? Ichi is combined with the rest in onyomi and hito is with the rest in kunyomi. And イッ is actually the same as ichi,but just it's difficult to pronounce ichi,so we change ichi to イッ to make it easier to pronounce. For example ,一回 should be ikkai,but even if you pronounce ichikai,we understand. Maybe an easy way could be that you just pronounce in "the basic way " like ichi,and later get correction about each word. Btw ,mostly before pronunciations like p,k,t,there's a tendency for 一 to be イッ. 一回 ikkai 一本 lppon 一等 ittou / 一度 ichido cf) 一握り hitonigiri
Could this be a part of answers to your question ?
