Wanikani suggests remembering “coat” for kanji 答 and same for vocab 事, but yet, they’re different readings! I thought I was going crazy because I remembered clearly one reading for “coat” but when I was doing the reading for the other one, it’s a different reading! I didn’t realize this until I put the two next to each other.
Now I have to put extra energy in differentiating the two. 
IMO, it’s not likely to be a problem for you. 事 is such a commonly used word you won’t be able to forget it.
This. Also It’s always possible to come up with mnemonics of your own.
But I think your complaint is justified.
Edit: (rephrasing)
I don’t see why it isn’t justified… WK has been getting better at keeping the mnemonics more consistent, but I feel that optimally a certain mnemonic should always map to a single reading.
There are some cases where show is used for both しょ and しょう for instance, which is frustrating.
That said, as mentioned above, 事 will likely stick in your mind no matter what, since it’s so common (it’s used all the time to make verbs into nouns, for instance)
I agree with that. One that always gets me is that they have used わず and わざ both for “was.” It doesn’t come up much at least.
I use about 60 % of wanikani mnemonics and make rest myself. If something just doesn’t look good enough for me i spend time to come up with better one. Like most of those “Close enough to help you remember” things. I kind of know weather it’s actually gonna help me remember or not.
There are other examples. I remember using “food” for both ふ and ふう
Agree. I’d prefer to have different mnemonics for different readings and vice versa
When the Mnemonic is confusing
Am I the only one who has never used mnemonics before…?
Any mnemonics? Or just WK’s?
Any mnemonics would be a little strange, most people are taught a few through the course of school.
Not using WK’s mnemonics through level 7 is normal, since a lot of people come to WK with a decent amount of Japanese knowledge and simply skip the lesson content.
Any, I see why some people would use them but I’ve never had to deal with mnemonics anywhere before university (to learn the freaking periodic table order) so I guess I’m biased, I mean it takes the same amount of effort to learn the mnemonic than to learn the actual thing so!
To remind me to clip my vowels, I tend to use “Fo’ sho’” if I need a short しょ, but I’ll use “Sho’ Nuff” if I need a long しょう.
Who’s the baddest Shogun in Harlem? SHO’ NUFF!
Am I the only one who has never used mnemonics before…?
Given that you are posting in WK forums and that the one of the biggest benefits to using WK is the mnemonics, you are likely in the minority here. There are many ways that mnemonics can actually save you work, but everybody learns differently.
Seen many people say they don’t use the WK mnemonics, but not sure what the percentage of each group is.
I use them some, but not to a large extent. Usually it’s more of a simplied version of the radicals, something like “Turkey + Helment = Defend = Godzilla (ご）” (I just made that one up I forget what all radicals are in defend)…if I use them at all.
But I am not going to spent a lot of time attempting to memorize a large story to associate with the kanji. For me, my brain has no preconception of what the kanji mean, so it doesn’t take long for it to associate this blob of lines = cat and so on. Getting the reading right is usually the part that takes longer and where I might find the mnemonic useful.
No it doesn’t? The whole point of a mnemonic is that you tie something hard to remember to something easier to remember. It takes some effort to remember the thing, and you get the harder abstract thing along with it for free. Humans remember stories better than we remember strings of unrelated sounds or symbols, and that’s what Japanese is to English speakers at first.
After you study enough Japanese, the patterns become ingrained. You can do all that without mnemonics, but I think you haven’t given mnemonics a chance or haven’t used them properly if they are “equally” hard to remember as the things you’re trying to learn.
Well they’re equally difficult, not equally hard, it doesn’t take much effort to learn kanjis
In what sense do “equally difficult” and “equally hard” not mean the same thing?
Also, I noticed it says you’ve been a member since 2015. Not to make a big deal out of it, but since you said it doesn’t take much effort, why are you level 7?