When a kanji comes up and I put in the vocabulary pronunciation, there’s a little pause and it prompts me to give the other reading.
Ex: 中 comes up and I write “なか”. Wanikani pauses and tells me it’s looking for the other reading.
I put in “ちゅう” and it accepts it.
BUT, this doesn’t go the other way.
If the vocabulary come up and I put in the kanji pronunciation, it’s just wrong.
This is both frustrating and silly.
Are you suggesting it’s not wrong?
Frustrating, maybe. Silly, no.
Read the FAQ.
Just to clarify in case it wasn’t clear.
Both なか and ちゅう are valid readings of the kanji 中. However, WK wants to confirm that you remember ちゅう before they let you move on, because they always want you to at least answer with the reading they taught you in the kanji lesson. They always choose one reading to teach in the kanji lesson, so as not to overwhelm you, but all the other readings are valid for the kanji as well.
But when you see the word 中 by itself in a sentence, it is wrong to read it as ちゅう. So there’s no leeway there.
Also you first learn (with kanji) the most common reading, so sometimes you learn the on’yomi and sometimes you learn the kun’yomi
As is being stated above, one thing is the kanji and another thing is the word, so yes kanji might be read in several ways, but when you are using it as a word, you just can’t use wrong lectures.
I get that, and I do remember both readings. However, the system gives a warning that it’s asking for the other reading in one case and not the other.
So when the system is asking for the kanji reading, and you input the vocabulary reading, it gives you a second chance and a pop up saying “WaniKani is looking for the other reading.”
However, when asking for the vocabulary reading, if you put in the kanji reading, no such warning or message pops up.
I’m actually talking about the warning messages that pop up in the system itself and not the reading of the kanji.
WaniKani gives you a warning in some cases, but not in others.
The system gives a warning that it’s asking for the other reading in one case and not the other.
So when the system is asking for the kanji reading, and you input the vocabulary reading, it gives you a second chance and a pop up saying “WaniKani is looking for the other reading.”
However, when asking for the vocabulary reading, if you put in the kanji reading, no such warning or message pops up.
This doesn’t help me remember the kanji in either case.
I think this is probably due to the fact that ちゅう isn’t a word.
Both なか and ちゅう are fine for the kanji
ちゅう is not correct for the vocabulary 中
If it gave you a warning, and didn’t mark you incorrect, you could get by without ever learning the real pronunciation of the vocabulary. You could just guess readings of the kanji over and over again.
For most kanji and vocab you are going to have to just memorize what readings are used for vocabulary, since there isn’t really rules for it.
That’s because both readings are valid for the kanji, but both are not valid for the vocab. You don’t get a warning for vocab because it is simply wrong in that case.
口 can be pronounced as こう or くち but 入り口 would be wrong as いりこう. Just like it would be wrong if for 人口 you were to put じんくち.
Actually 中 read as ちゅう can be a word but it has a completely different meaning than what wanikani presents. It’s usually used as a suffix to mean “in the middle of doing x”. For example in games/apps and the likes I’ll often see ロード中 to mean currently loading.
Sorry! I meant on it’s own, like 机の中 and things like that. 
In WK that would be ～中 so they could add it if they wanted, but yeah, it’s not the same item.
Yeah… I explained why they give a warning in one case and why they don’t give a warning in the other case.
You’re not alone in being annoyed by this, many people are. But WaniKani seems to have decided that that’s the best way to go about it, and it won’t change shrug
I mean, it shouldn’t give a warning if the answer is outright wrong (in the case of the vocab in this case), it should immediately be marked incorrect.
But I know it’s frustrating that it doesn’t just accept every right answer for readings (instead of giving a warning), but I understand why it’s done that way. I think it keeps everything a bit tidier, for lack of a better word.
If I’m sitting with my teacher and my teacher says what’s this:
骨
I might answer “hone”. My teacher will say great. But what’s the other reading.
I’ll say, "Oh, That’s easy. “kotsu”.
But with WaniKani, even putting in a reading that’s right will sometimes give me an incorrect answer. I put in “kotsu” but it wants “hone” and now my answer is wrong.
This not only skews my score and accuracy but keeps easy words I already know in my study queue much longer.
Your teacher’s question is ambiguous. It’s not clear whether the word or the kanji is intended. On WK that’s not the case.
EDIT: And yes I’m aware that there is a word where 骨 would be read こつ, but that word is typically written コツ.
If it wasn’t ambiguous on WaniKani I never would have started this silly post. The only thing that makes it unambiguous here is that wanikani has a colored background.
It says Kanji Reading or Vocab Reading as well.