A very short question

Japanese Language Questions
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hi guys!

Do you guys learn all the reading that are given for a kanji? Or is it most of the times also Okay to just learn one of them?
For example, く and きゅう for 九

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WK doesn’t tend to teach all the possible readings, but they try to cover the most common ones. If they mention multiple readings, you can bet there is vocab in WK for both readings somewhere among the levels, or you’re very likely to encounter them both in the wild.

So I would personally say: do your best to learn all of them. It’ll make things easier in the long run. :slight_smile:

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wow, thanks for the fast reply!!!

I will follow you advice and learn all of them then :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks again!!

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I’m still at the very beginning of a loong WaniKani journey, but I can assure you: you don’t always have to learn the second reading right at the beginning :)) If they’re pretty similar, like くand きゅう, I can easily remember them (and I’m sure you can, too ^^). And if they’re totally different, I will just wait until a vocabulary word with that particular reading shows up and learn it through the vocab word! Until now that didn’t cause me any problems at all (I’ll have to wait for the harder levels though).

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You can also sneak a little peak in the page for the specific kanji. All vocabulary containing that kanji are on the knaji’s page, so you can see if any readings are going to come up later on, or whether you have to learn the other reading on your own.

In general though, I find it easier to know all readings, as it makes learning the vocab so much easier.

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I, on the other hand, have found keeping more than one or two readings in my head without the context of vocabulary to be difficult and confusing. So while I read all the information during lessons, I only try to learn the reading WK suggests I learn at that point and learn the others in the context of the vocab.

So this is a case where the user has to find out what works best for them. Or maybe it’ll get easier for me once I’ve got another 50 levels or so. :wink:

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Personally I like to start off with just one reading and then curse The Inventor of Japanese when I find vocabulary using a different reading.

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If you have a good memory, go ahead and learn all of them(the ones that WK offers).

Personally I just learn the one suggested reading, and learn the others through the vocab.

If your going outside WK, learning all the readings for each kanji, would be very time consuming, and questionably unnecessary.

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Contrary to @Omun 台 's advice*, I would learn just one of the ones that get the answer right on the kanji. Then, I would learn another one if I needed it for a vocabulary item. Then if I encountered a different one “in the wild”, I would learn that one.

Note that this results in the same answer - learn them all :smiley:. Just, you’re waiting for real life to tell you when, not spending effort memorizing something you might not need. Side benefit - it’s easier to remember when you have a real word (A for Apple)

* Which is probably much better than mine since I’m still a beginner too so what do I know? but I can’t stand to not say my 2¢

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There is of course no one way to learn, and whatever works, works. :ok_hand:

I know that for me, it’s best if I learn multiple readings as early as possible. I know not everyone feels the same way, but I am someone that benefits from the mnemonics.

On more than one occasion, there have been WK words that use an alt reading that I hadn’t really stored away mentally. The reading mnemonic, however, would then only mention something along the lines of “Just make sure you remember to use the alternative reading that you learned with the kanji.” Almost invariably, those words have become leeches, because even if I check the mnemonic for the word, it doesn’t help me unless I take extra time to navigate back to the individual kanji. That’s frustrating if you’re trying to chew through a large pile of reviews.

Same with being slowed down while looking up unfamiliar jukugo when I’m reading native stuff. I try to look it up. Fail. Have to go additional effort to get all the kanji together to do a search, only to realize I didn’t try to switch out one of the on’yomi to its alternate reading.

That’s my personal experience and reasoning behind it, but @Luuk01234 will find their preferred method soon enough, I’m sure.

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