I’m constantly getting these wrong 天国, 外国, 米国, 中国, and others 国
Sometimes it’s koku, somtimes it’s goku.
What’s the trick to memomize when to use koku vs goku spelling? Just keep practicing everyday? Can wanikani be less punishing and just accept either one like bunpro.
This concept, Rendaku, is a pretty hard one for most learners (myself included) to get accustomed to- but it does tend to get much easier with just some time and practice. Not “easy”, but more predictable and natural.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a terribly encompassing solution or trick- nor could it be treated as a simple either/or- but it is just one of the many quirks of Japanese, and one that takes some adaptation.
This article is extremely detail-rich if you want to learn more about it;
Thanks. I guess we just have to memorize them. English is difficult in the same way I guess. I didn’t realize English was difficult until I watched a few tiktok videos making fun of English prounounciations.
月 is another one this week I struggle with. Sometimes げつ and sometimes がつ, sometimes つき, sometimes づき
A little trick I noticed with 月 is that in reference to a specific month, it is always がつ, even as a question.
何月 なんがつ
４月 しがつ
９月 くがつ
But if the month is relative (such as in this, next, or last) then it becomes げつ in the great majority of cases.
来月 らいげつ
先月 せんげつ
今月 こんげつ
Some words appear to fall outide of this structure, but this should work well as a heuristic. 
毎月 is まいつき and it annoys me a little, but it is what it is.
For these specific ones I decided that 天国 and 中国 will both be god-like in my memory (ご instead of こ). I’ve found that the more vocab I learn the more I can decide what “sounds right” for rendaku. As painful as it is (I have some very early vocab that comes back again and again), Wanikani is doing the right thing by only accepting the correct answer.
Yes, I’m starting to do the same thing. Goku 悟空 is a dragonballZ main character. So I try to remember that Goku is a chinese superhero that lives in heaven.
with 毎月, wanikani doesn’t punish you when you type in まいげつ. Wanikani says please use a more common word for 毎月 and then I remember to type in まいつき
It helps for me sometimes to remember the Romaji form, rather than Kana and tiny dakuten/handakuten.
g / k, rather than が / か. More visual difference, rather than just tiny thing and little of sound differences. (Though, iirc, remembering just 天国, 中国 for goku is on the point.)
Some weak pairs to remember for me are zu / su (ず / す) and dzu / tsu (づ / つ), as I cannot reliably hear sound differences.
げつ, がつ, つき don’t make as much problem, as I can eventually recall the whole word being exist at all somewhere. (Though, the key with SRS is, not to be perfect yet, just repeat optimally, until you hear them being used.)
About 90% of the time it’s whatever is easiest to say when speaking rapidly.
I want to “goto” heaven was the way I finally remembered it.
I currently have a “reading answered correct” streak of 6, which is my longest.
Sadly, after 53 attempts, I’m only at 70%! On the bright side, I’ve gotten the meaning correct 100% of time time.
Honestly if I only miss a rendaku in a word, I usually just mark it as correct (I’m using Tsurukame, which has that ability baked in, but there are other scripts and such for however you’re doing Wanikani). I’m here to learn Japanese well enough to read and understand it, not to be perfect with every tai that should be dai. Japanese people aren’t gonna deport me over that when I visit, and it’s something you get better at by using it more in real life. I make a judgment call and move on.
imo, I would try to get a near-native level of Rendaku mistakes (or Kanji reading mistakes too, tbh); but not something to mess up too early on. Also, getting better than natives in some vocabularies is really nothing to lose.
Maybe a little worse than natives, but not too far worse.
i feel your struggle xD for me it’s especially the different readings for 人 and 月 that i keep mixing up ._. I think rendaku is really just something that you have to memorize the hard way and get wrong until it sticks. It can help to come up with a mnemomic though. For 国 i always think of こく as the “standard” reading since it’s more common in WK vocab, and therefore only important or nice places have to honor to be named after Son Goku (ごく): 中国、天国、南国. at least thats how it works for me lol
I would prefer a ‘ignore rendaku setting’ for people who don’t care. or something less punishing like
‘That’s possible, but what’s a much more common reading?’ which shows up sometimes for other redaku words.
You can’t really ignore pronunciation or not care, because it becomes a different word that sometimes exists and sometimes doesn’t exist.
It’s a bit like saying that “cap” and “cab” are the same word.
What you can do, is to not add words you don’t care about to your typing-based SRS system. Afaik WK doesn’t punish for skipping words. Just learn them outside of SRS, or in a self-grade SRS system.
Is there an option to not learn a word at all in wanikani? For example, I don’t want to learn 水星, 土星, 金星. I don’t even know the planet names in english that well.
If you select your vocab using the advanced selection option on the lessons tab, you could just ignore it- though it’ll crowd up your lineup which is annoying. Otherwise there is no official way to just skip or pass on specific words or Kanji.
If it was really irritating you, you could get an Anki mode script and just Y/N answer to pass them off really fast, or you could add your own user synonym to each term if you have a non-English alternative you’re more comfortable with (or you could just mark it as nonsense like “a” and then whenever it shows up just type a + enter to ‘skip’ past the definition).
Thanks, that’s a great idea. I’ll give the planets a synonymous name like star.