I am just starting learning Japanese and Kanji, and need some help with the WaniKani website. When I learn a new kanji, it has one or more ways of pronunciation written in hiragana. Unfortunately, when I enter the kanji site, there is no way to hear the kanji read out loudly in Japanese. There is however many “vocabulary words” that means the same as the kanji, that can be read loudly, but have very different pronunciations. For example, the mountain kanji is pronounced “san” while the mountain word is pronounced “yama”.
What is difference between kanji and vocabulary words, and is there any way to hear the kanjis read out loudly?
Thank you.
When you do a kanji lesson, you are taught just one reading, so as to not try to take on too much info at once.
It’s true that the word 山 is read やま.
But the reading さん does get used. It appears in compounds. For instance, Mount Fuji in Japanese is 富士山 (ふじさん). The さん part is the reading for mountain in that compound.
The kanji lessons don’t have audio, because they aren’t words. So recording audio would inherently introduce pronunciation aspects that wouldn’t necessarily match how the kanji appear in words. Explaining that is a bit more of an advanced topic though, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it for now.
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Kanji have different readings. You have your Kun’yomi readings and your On’yomi readings. When a kanji is just on its own, it’ll usually use the Kun’yomi reading. In case of the mountain kanji, that is ‘yama’. However, when it’s a Jukugo of multiple kanji, it will usually use the On’yomi reading, which in the case of the mountain kanji is ‘San’.
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you beat me to it by a hair xD
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Thank you for your informative and fast replies. If I understood correctly, does the kanji reading not directly mean anything by itself, but sometimes the kanji has a meaning on its own that can have a different pronunciation?
So for example, the kanji 山 is just a symbol used to write many words, and that kanji by itself is pronounced さん. Also, there is a word (mountain) who happen to be written the same way, but this word is pronounced やま?
It’s Leebo. It’s what he does. To the extent that whenever you get juuuust out posted by any other person on this forum, we call that “being Leebo’d”. 
If you’re reading a book or whatever, and you encounter the kanji 山 standing on its own, it’s the word やま. If you find it attached to something else, like 山脈 (to pick a random example), then for that word, it’s read さん. 山 in place names can be either, confusingly - like 富士山 is さん, or 飛鳥山 is やま, but you simply have to learn them as you encounter them.
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I’ll get him next time! shakes fist
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This is basically true, but I wouldn’t give priority to さん or やま. One or the other has to come first, but that doesn’t mean the kanji has a default reading or anything.
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Thank you once again. Since さん is what you learn when the kanji is introduced in WaniKani, does that mean I wont get a correct answer if I write it as やま ?
Some kanjis, as 大, are presented with multiple ways of pronouncing (たい and だい). 七 on the other hand, was only presented with one, しち, although なな seems like another way. Does this make a difference or am I just over complicating things?
If you answer the kanji item with やま, it will shake and remind you it wants the other reading, because both readings are correct, but they want you to answer with the one you were taught first. If you answer the vocab word 山 with さん, it’ll get marked wrong, because さん is not a word on its own.
I suppose it’s more accurate to say you are taught one “category” of readings when you do a kanji lesson. Many kanji only have one reading per category, but some have multiple readings in the same category. Some have many, in fact, like 生.
These categories are based on the etymology they are derived from. Onyomi readings come from Chinese, that’s the たい and だい of 大 and しち for 七. Kunyomi readings come from Japanese, which would be おお for 大 and なな for 七.
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七 is a funny one. Numbers are an exception to the rule. Where usually you’d use Kun’yomi when you see a kanji on its own, numbers usually use the on’yomi reading.
Except for 七 and 四 who use kun’yomi instead. Exceptions within exceptions!
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