Sub-Lexical Phonological Cues in Japanese Kanji Reading

Sub-lexical phonological cues in Japanese Kanji refer to the information embedded within parts of a Kanji character that provide hints about the character’s pronunciation. While Kanji is primarily processed as a whole-word (lexical) logographic unit, sub-lexical processing operates serially, particularly in phonetic compounds (Keisei Moji). Despite the increasing number of Japanese language learners, many studies have highlighted learners’ difficulties in learning Japanese, especially with Kanji. The complexity of Kanji starts to be a challenging slope for learners. Each kanji character can have multiple readings, and appropriate pronunciation need to be chosen according to the context in which the character is used. In English language, letters from alphabet are used to represent pronunciation, while in Japanese, Kanji have multiple pronunciations depending on the context in which they are used. As learners increase their proficiency, it is a desirable outcome that they will become less reliant on instant learning aids, and more reliant on their own memory when deducing the readings of unknown kanji in newspapers and magazines. The ability to identify phonological cues in Kanji can be considered as one of the alternatives to ease the Kanji reading among learners.

Phonology, Kanji, Japanese language

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