Wanikani only accepts bei “Koku” for 米国, chuu “Goku” for 中国, and ten “Goku” for 天国, yet I just typed all of these with “Goku”. Is there a reason for this? Shouldn’t all of them take both “goku” and “koku”?
Well, your IME guesses the right kanji from your input, but that doesn’t change that the word that 米国 represents is always read べいこく
If you had an English IME and typed “onest” and it turned it to 1st, it would still not change that 1st would correctly be read as first and never onest
Readings belong to words, and most words have one correct reading. Kanji readings are possible readings for that kanji in different words, but they’re not interchangeable, each word uses one of the kanji’s reading.
IMEs are far more forgiving than e.g. people’s understanding of words if you said them out loud with the wrong sound. Actually with some IMEs, you can omit all the 濁点 (like in べ) and 半濁点 (like inぺ) and it will still present the correct word as an option, but that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but Jisho and other dictionaries do give both readings for 米国 and 天国.
See the highlighted part
Even if you want to argue with someone that this reading for this word does exist (the other examples brought up in this thread not withstanding), I don’t think WaniKani’s goal here is to teach archaic readings. Nor was the purpose of the thread to let WaniKani staff know that it’s missing these readings, but it was about a misunderstanding of how an IME can guess the correct kanji even though your input didn’t match the word’s reading 100%
I think araigoshi’s answer was also quite helpful in clearing up this confusion