Disabling Kanji readings?

WaniKani Requesting Help
#1

Is there a userscript to disable lessons/reviews for Kanji readings, and only retain meanings? I suppose a userscript that automatically submits a correct answer for Kanji readings would work. But ideally, I don’t even want to SEE the reading for the Kanji during lessons/reviews.

I know this is probably controversial, but I feel like at least for me personally WK would be more effective if I stopped trying to memorize the readings of individual Kanji from the get-go. I find that after I’ve guru-ed kanji, I’m mostly relying on recalling a jokugo vocab word first and then deriving a reading from there. It’s easy but rather roundabout. And I pretty much just put a random reading based on whatever vocab word I think of first, oftentimes not the primary reading I memorized earlier in the Kanji lesson.

I’m pretty early in my studies, so I’m open to hearing some thoughts :slight_smile: . But if you know of any such userscript I’d really appreciate it!

#2

Not to be glib, but…

If you’re trying to learn Japanese then you should be learning both the reading and the meaning of kanji.

If all you want to do is get tested on kanji meanings and vocab words, there are other SRS systems which will do that.

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#3

I’m saying that I am learning the readings of Kanji. If you know how to read a vocab word that contains the Kanji, do you not know a reading of the Kanji?

#4

Not necessarily. 今日, 明日, 昨日 are just one set of examples where you don’t actually learn either a on or kun reading when learning those words. Those are exceptional readings, but there are plenty of words like that.

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#5

Thanks for pointing that out! I see there are some exceptions. I’m still not sure if I’d want to memorize individual readings for each character though. AFAICT, not even WK forces you to do that since they only teach you one of either kun’yomi or on’yomi anyway? I seem to be able to memorize vocabulary really easily even if it wasn’t using the reading I memorized for the Kanji.

#6

One other thing I’d recommend is reading the guide that Tofugu (who make WaniKani) published on readings and the benefits of learning them, which should give you some insight in why they teach things the way they do on wanikani:

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#7

Isn’t this basically what the Heisig Method, or that kanji book try to do? You learn only the meanings of the kanji, and then you learn the readings through vocab exposure.

#8

Hmm, could be, I can’t say I’ve ever bothered with Heisig or using any source other than WaniKani for kanji learning.

#9

Thanks for the article!

Yeah I’m not sure what would work better for me. I just figured if there was a way to disable, then I would try it out for a level or two, and see how I feel about it.

#10

I think you got it backwards. You learn readings from kanji and then you’re able to read vocab. Plus, WK teaches different readings using vocab. Kanji reading is usually the most commonly used on’yomi or if on’yomi is rare, then kun’yomi. Other readings are tought ghrough vocab, sometimes levels apart.

After a while you’ll be able to guess how to read a new kanji based on the radicals. So it’s not even a lot of work to learn on’yomi readings on later levels.

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#11

This is true. I’ve mentioned the same about radicals. But, it comes with many caveats.

Knowing readings based on radicals is handy, but in Japanese, spotty at the very best. Maybe 20% of the time it can do the work for you, and another 10%-20% give a hint. The rest is all over the place.

The OPs idea isn’t without some merit. It is not how I would do it. But Kanji are so chaotic, we are learning literally up to five readings for a few between different On, Kun, and exceptions. Some things have told me that Japanese themselves learn more on a word by word than reading basis. I doubt the veracity behind this, but the idea isn’t without some reason.

TL;DR: OP isn’t doing it how we would, or necessarily the best way. But it isn’t all out horse-crazy. If he learns the words, eventually he’ll have a language.

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#12

Well, discussions of whether or not it’s wise aside, to directly answer OP’s question:

While there’s no userscript that’ll allow you to skip the readings of kanji, you could install the Override script, which allows you to mark any answer you give as being correct.

I wouldn’t, though.

(Aside from anything else, there’s several kanji in later lessons with no related vocab items at all, meaning the kanji lesson is the only exposure you’ll get.)

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#13

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