Why was on'yomi (音読み) created?


As far as I understand it the Japanese Kanjis are derived from the Chinese
ones. This was to introduce a **writing** system in Japan. But for the on‘yomi
reading, the Japanese also took the **spoken** word for the Kanji from the
Chinese one. Does that mean they stopped using the Japanese word for it and
suddenly started to use a different Chinese word in their spoken language? Why
would they do it? What was the motivation or driving factor to use Chinese
pronunciation in Japan?

Or, did they just adopt the Chinese pronunciation for words that didn’t exist
back then in Japan?




> Does that mean they stopped using the Japanese word for it and suddenly
> started to use a different Chinese word in their spoken language?

That's the other way around. People had spoken Chinese at first when they read
documents, which were written in Chinese, like songs were sung in Latin. Then,
those words were naturally taken into Japanese vocabulary.

So, on'yomi was not so much created as given from the beginning. It's rather
kun'yomi that's created.

