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Given a word and its reading, I'm interested in having it be automatically be
identified as Japanese-origin (和語, but excluding 和製英語 and 和製漢語) or not. False
negatives and positives aren't really a problem for my use case, but naturally
they should be minimised if they can.

What would be some heuristics that can be implemented relatively easily in a
computer program (say, less than 100 lines per rule (using libraries is fine)
and doesn't require large amounts of training data)?

Here are some that I've thought up of. Are they correct? Can they be refined?

  * Word does not contain "litte" characters (excluding ヶ) nor long vowels (not so sure about this one)
  * Number of syllables (which I suppose is equivalent to mora if the above rule is true) is longer than the number of characters in the word
  * Word contains at least one kanji or hiragana (to exclude most of the 外来語)

Related: [How to tell if a word is Sino-Japanese or
Yamato](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/23098/how-to-tell-if-a-
word-is-sino-japanese-or-yamato) and
<http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1022933605>
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etymology wago-and-kango
Heuristics for identifying Japanese-origin words (和語)
First of all, if a word contains both _kanji_ and _hiragana_ , it's very
likely to be _wago_. (E.g. 食べる、美しい、…)

If the word consists of _kanji_ only, like you said counting the number of
syllables is a good approach. (Of course, _on'yomi_ are to be one syllable, so
long vowels, like リョウ, and endings like ク、ン、ツ、チ pass as one syllable, even if
the reading is two morae.)

This basically reduces the problem to distinguishing one-syllable (= one-mora)
_wago_ , like 手、目、…, from one-mora _on'yomi_ , like 胃、花、…. If I don't know, I
usually guess from the sound it contains and you can probably teach your
program to do the same, e.g. カ is likely to be _on'yomi_. There will be false
positives like 蚊 or 木, but these rare exceptions could even be hard-coded.

(Of course, there are words for which the _wago_ – _kango_ – _gairaigo_
distinction is ill-defined, like 手帳 or 胃袋. I'm not sure if you want teach your
program to identify these as _jūbako yomi_ , _yutō yomi_ , etc.)

I think you can derive the likelihood from the [list of _jōyō
kanji_](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%B8%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7)
by making a list of all one-mora (rather one- _kana_ ) _on'yomi_ and one-mora
_kun'yomi_.
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A few rules of thumb to identify _kango_ 漢語 (and thus _wago_ as well) exist:

  1. Virtually all _i_ -adjectives (形容詞) and verbs (except for the -する verbs) are _wago_. Of course, all function words could only be _wago_. Thus, _kango_ terms are usually nouns, adverbs or _na_ -adjectives (形容動詞). (I'm not sure about _gairaigo_ , but I don't think that they are often used as _na_ -adjectives: most _gairaigo_ are thus nouns or adverbs).
  2. In the Sinitic languages (i.e., Chinese), each character almost always stand for one syllable (and have almost always been so). Consequentially, **in most Japanese _kango_ terms, each character is usually pronounced with one syllable** (i.e., one vowel/diphthong per kanji), which may be one or more morae. Thus, one could tell that 花見｛はなみ｝ is _wago_ , while 花粉｛かふん｝ is _kango_.

  3. Prominent exception to rule 2: in Middle Chinese (from which _kango_ was borrowed), the pronunciation of some characters had the consonant endials -p, -t, or -k. In modern Japanese, many of those characters are pronounced with two syllables, with the second syllable being ツ (from -t) or ク (from -k). (Most of the -p endials, however, have disappeared in modern Japanese). Examples include words such as 国立｛こくりつ｝ ( _kango_ ). Note that there is a city in Tokyo Metropolis named 国立｛くにたち｝: this name is _wago_.

  4. Not-so-prominent exception to rule 2: in some early Chinese loanwords, rule 2 is violated. Examples include words such as 儀式｛ぎしき｝ ( _kango_ ), where 式 is read シキ, which is its 呉音 _go-on_ reading. The reason this happens is that many _go-on_ readings are borrowed indirectly through Korean readings of Chinese characters - and also simply because that _go-on_ are ultimately from an early and non-standard dialect of Chinese.

  5. Troublesome situation 1: 当｛あ｝て字｛じ｝ , i.e. using kanji solely for their pronunciation (without regard to their logographic meaning). This happens in Japanese from time to time, and sometimes the on'yomi of the characters are used for this purpose, making things really tricky. One tricky example is 沢山｛たくさん｝, of which the etymology is actually unclear (but presumably _wago_ ). The kanji here are ateji, and obviously the word has nothing to do with swamps (沢) or mountains (山). However, it looks like a _kango_ word so much.

  6. Troublesome situation 2: sometimes _kango_ terms contain complex (sometimes _hyōgai_ 表外) kanji and are often written (partially or completely) in kana. Examples include 綺麗｛きれい｝ and 皮膚｛ひふ｝ (both _kango_ ), which are usually written as きれい and 皮ふ respectively, simply because the kanji are difficult and hard to get right.

以上です。
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