Hello, I am Yoshi from NILS Japanese language school.
Today we would like to talk more about how to build up your kanji sense.

Why do kanji have different readings? This makes you feel kanji more difficult, I guess.
[Point 1]
There are Chinese and Japanese ways of reading most kanji. Kanji came to Japan from China around the third century. The readings that accompanied the characters at that time are on-yomi 音読み, or phonetic readings. Japanese people later used Chinaese characters to write Japanese words with the same meaning, but completely different pronunciation. The Japanese reading of a character is the kun-yomi　訓読み, or semantic reading.
Example
花：　on-yomi　か／kun-yomi　はな
水：　on-yomi　すい／kun-yomi　みず

[Point 2]
Sometimes the reading of a kanji changes depending on the kanji that comes before or after it. When certain kanji are put together, one or more of their readings may slightly change to make the word they form easier to pronounce. The pronunciation of a knaji will often change when it precedes another kanji that begins with a [k], [s], [t], or [h] sound.
Example
学（がく）　＋　校（こう）　→　学校（がっこう）
文（ぶん）　＋　法（ほう）　→　文法（ぶんぽう）

January 29th News, from NILS Japanese language school.