I get what on’yomi and kun’yomi are, but I’m not sure when to use which one, especially in the context of Wanikani’s lessons. In the lessons, what is the “kanji reading” asking for and what is the “vocabulary reading” asking for? For example when 女 shows up idk if I should be answering じょ or あんな.
And just in general, how do I know if a Japanese word is using on’yomi or kun’yomi? So far I’ve just been relying on pure memorization for each word, but I don’t want to do that forever. There seems to be a new kun’yomi for every new word!
If it’s a vocabulary word with only one kanji, like 人 (hito) on level 1, you’ll read the kun’yomi.
You’d use the on’yomi if the kanji is not by itself, like in アメリカ人 (amerikajin). Now the 人 is read as “jin”.
So if the question is purple (vocab), you should answer with kun’yomi. If it’s pink, it’s on’yomi because it’s not its own word, but rather a kanji character that can be used within a word.
Correct me if I’m wrong, since I was also wondering this. Your comment made me want to find out, so I took a closer look at how they’re used. Wanikani says, “When a vocab is a single kanji and all alone like this, it’s usually going to use the kun’yomi”.
I’d also like to add that, as WaniKani always teaches the most common reading for the kanji, sometimes that reading is kun’yomi. 犬 is a good example: instead of teaching けん for the kanji and いぬ for the vocab item, WK teaches いぬ for both. Because in most words that have 犬 as one of the kanji, the reading いぬ is used. However, there are words like 愛犬 that use the rare on’yomi けん reading for that kanji.
If you want to be sure which reading is on’yomi and which is kun’yomi, you can always look up the item on WK or on jisho.org.
Overall, I’d recommend just memorizing the reading WK teaches and not worrying about whether they are on’yomi or kun’yomi. Later you’d be able to distinguish them better.
I understand you unwillingnes to continue doing it, but I’m afraid, at least for now, it is the best approach…
Once you’ve memorized enough, you’d start seeing patterns which would allow you to guess the reading of a new word most of the time… But not all the time.
If you want a system that would allow you to always determine the reading of any new word without fail – then I’m afraid there is no such thing.
A lot of 熟語 (compound words) use on’yomi…
But some use kun’yomi instead…
And there are words that use on’yomi for some of the kanji and kun’yomi for other kanji…
And finally there are words that have special reading, not related to readings of the kanji they are made of…
This might sound overwhelming, but you would get used to this.
Anyway, welcome to WaniKani and this community!
I really hope you’d like it here and stay with us!
The “kanji reading" is just “whatever WK decided to teach you in the kanji lesson”, though they usually describe it as the most useful reading. Other readings would not be incorrect as far as how the kanji can be read, but WK still wants to drill down on the one they taught you.
So there’s no hard rule, it’s just “the one from the lesson.”
This is partly because early levels are very common kanji, and very common kanji are the ones most likely to have multiple readings and special case weird readings. But it’s also because WK is trying to teach you kanji, and so naturally it’s going to be teaching you a lot of kunyomi. WK views the vocab items as a means to an end (getting you to learn all those kanji and some relevant words for each reading of each kanji), it’s not trying to teach you vocab as an aim in itself. (There are lots of common words it won’t teach you, notably anything typically written in kana, but also where they feel they already have enough vocab words using a given reading then they don’t need to add more.) So the kunyomi:onyomi ratio in WK’s vocab choices is likely higher than in, say, a “top 10,000 words by frequency” list. (I’m guessing here: it would be interesting to check the stats to confirm :))
Another reason that the earlier levels are quite heavy on kunyomi is that onyomi are most often used in two-kanji words, but to teach those words you need to first teach both kanji; so it takes a while before you’ve learnt a big enough stock of kanji to be able to do much “here’s a word that combines a kanji you learnt earlier with this new one” vocab.
Other than that, I second the general advice of “just memorize the vocabulary readings”. Eventually you will notice that there are patterns in how the kanji are usually used and read that make it possible for you to make mostly-right guesses when you don’t know a word; but that is a fallback for when you don’t know the word, and it’s not 100% reliable, and in any case you will build up that guessing ability “for free” in the course of studying vocab.
This chart from kanjidamage helped me a lot when I was struggling with the same thing! Jukugo are words that use multiple kanji. Okurigana are words with kanji and hiragana. This chart is a good rule of thumb if you can’t remember which to use, although there are a lot, especially in the first few levels, that don’t follow this chart, so you just have to brute force memorize them unfortunately.
I reached level 2 and accepted whatever wanikani throws at me , brooding over it just gets you frustated so try to memorize the mnemonics as best as you can that way you will get the hang of on’yomi and kun’yomi .
Don’t forget to say sweet words to our wanikani whenever the frustation wants to you smash something as there is more to come in this journey , as a beginner i also sometimes say flowery words . Good luck .
.