I have been studying Japanese for a little more than a year now,and I've been
learning kanji for a few months.

I understand the basics about readings, but I don't really get the historic
reason of why the Chinese readings were imported along with kanji.

If I understand correctly, back then Old Japanese was already a language by
itself, only lacking a writing system which was imported from China.

Now, I understand that maybe they took some kanji which represented things for
which they didn't have a Japanese word, and thus used the Chinese sounds they
heard.

But seeing the huge amount of compound words which use onyomi, it's impossible
to think that none of them were used before with their native pronunciation,
especially since there are also a lot of words which having more that one
kanji use kunyomi. For example, some vocabulary words I've learnt recently
are: 大雨 ( おおあめ, kunyomi) and 小川 ( おがわ, kunyomi).But 火山 is かざん (onyomi).Maybe
the concept "volcano" didn't have a word for itself in Japanese, but why
create it imitating Chinese instead of joining their native words (ひ and やま)?
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2016-08-01T13:54:20.997
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2016-08-01T18:35:30.503
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question
kanji history onyomi old-japanese
Why were Chinese readings imported along with kanji?
People didn't import kanji to assign them to Japanese words but to study
Buddhism or to communicate with Chinese diplomats, in short, to read Chinese.
It's no wonder that Chinese reading was imported when they needed to read
Chinese.

(As for volcano, Mt Aso or Mt Asama are a word that stands for volcano but
they are simultaneously a proper noun. As for Japan, "Yamato" domestically
more often meant a country in current Nara prefecture or "Yamatai" that is so
called since Moto'ori Norinaga than the nation in the archipelago.)
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answer