I was just asked for the vocab reading for "火", and I entered "か" when it was looking for "ひ". Is there a way to get it to say "I'm looking for the Kun'yomi reading instead" instead of just marking my answer wrong?

that must be hard for you…

well sometimes I just become agonzingly irrationally frustrated with some Wanikani’s mnemonics, too

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Yeah, this makes more sense the farther you go in kanji. The reason the left side is not moon, is because it’s actually 肉 (meat) and it got simplified over time when used as a reference to body parts. Sometimes 月 inside other kanji does mean moon, but in body parts it’s 肉.

The right side is used for its reading (basically, this kanji is composed using the idea "the body part that sounds like 旦). This is a very common way of composing kanji (it’s actually the most common way, making up a majority of kanji) so you’ll get used to it.

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Usually the 月 radical on the left side is not “moon”, but a simplified version of 肉 (meat) and it’s usually found in kanji that have something to do with internal organs. That’s a good rule of thumb to remember :grinning:.

Edit: Leebo’d again :frowning_face:

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The right side is used for its reading (basically, this kanji is composed using the idea "the body part that sounds like 旦). This is a very common way of composing kanji (it’s actually the most common way, making up a majority of kanji) so you’ll get used to it.

That’s a leftover from Chinese, right? I vaguely remember reading that Chinese characters are usually pairs where one half is the meaning and the other half is the sound.

Also, I think the use of “才” is similar as well. Apparently, a different kanji that was also pronounced “sai” was used for a while, but then they collectively got together and said “let’s just use this identically-pronounced 3-stroke Kanji instead”.

At least that makes more sense than Cockney Rhyming Slang, I guess.

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Considering the Japanese learned the kanji from the Chinese, it’s only natural.

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Yeah. It can even go backwards as well. 北 was originally a kanji for “back” or “facing away” (it’s two people facing away from each other). But that was the same pronunciation as the word for north, so it got used for that. Later they made another kanji that was just for back 背 (again we see “moon” meat) and 北 appears in it.

In the case of 胆 and 旦 they both do still sound like たん in the onyomi of Japanese. But sometimes the pronunciation connection is lost because of when in history the readings were imported.

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Learning the kanji is just learning the kanji. They’ve given you one of the readings (the most important or commonly used one) and you just have to recall that. If you know the others, good for you! But they want that specific one for you to advance forward because this is core knowledge.

Learning the vocab is learning the kanji in real situations. Meaning to say, the reading is very much suited to that particular scenario (a lone kanji). Get it wrong and you get it wrong because no real human would actually say the kanji like that (the wrong answer) by itself in any context! You have to learn the real one so you don’t end up making mistakes in actual situations!

Sure, it can get confusing when WaniKani switches between the two and I make mistakes too but you know what? Good! More learning for me. Eventually you’ll start paying closer attention to the background colour and recall which reading is required for when. I want to say that you can just use the alternate reading since the Kanji reviews will shake even if it’s wrong but that doesn’t work for some vocab that you learn down the line.

If you want to think of it in English, it’s like teaching someone the word ‘fire’ and giving them a context where ‘flame’ is required. If they prompt the word, use fire. If they prompt with some context, use flame. OR fire. Easy for us but tricky for a newcomer. Hence why they need to fail to learn and not let the system go easy on them. Doesn’t matter if the word is interchangeable, if they shout “FLAME! The building is on FLAME!”, they’d sound like an idiot (though a helpful one nonetheless).

See, the sooner you start appreciating getting the wrong answers, the sooner you’ll realise that that just means more learning! More reviews, more SRS and you can grasp it better! I’d rather you fail at both readings constantly, learn and properly memorise both by the end (contextually).

P.S. I understand there is a definitive difference between flame and fire but I’m just trying to nail the point across.

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I would use pyro for your example instead of flame. Chinese is to Japanese what Latin and Greek are to English.

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I just try and remember pink versus purple. If you’re on desktop maybe look into some userscripts, as there are a few that will be more clear about what WK is looking for (on vs kun, etc) but I personally don’t like to rely on them that much.

I understand the sentiment behind your message, but I don’t think it’s a helpful reply either for the OP or for WK. The Feedback forum is not just a casual hangout for community members, it’s literally the official forum for handling feedback to WK.

Personally, if I feel the ‘Bye Bye’ feeling when reading posts in this Feedback forum, I would simply not respond, rather than respond with something dismissive. In a different, more casual forum, maybe it’s a different story. My two cents.

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I see both sides. OP themselves acknowledged and apologised that they were overly aggressive and angry in tone in their original post over something that is fundamentally a feature of WK and not a “bug” so to speak.

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@ajshell1: I don’t think you need to apologize for showing your frustration in this Feedback forum, IMHO. (If we can’t show our frustrations here, then where else can we?) On the other hand, I’m not discounting your apology either. I sympathize. :blush:

On a slightly more serious note, speaking as someone who has gone through serious ‘burn out’ over the years, may I suggest that maybe this is a habit that would be worth trying to change/modify.

In some cases, we as humans can learn habits that ‘work for us’ ‘good enough’ for our situation at the time, but which can become unhealthy or otherwise problematic later on as our situations change. For example, up until university, I was able to get by quite well in school by cramming for tests/quizzes/etc. and eventually started to pull all-nighters to cram as subjects got more and more complex. It even worked through most of university. But when I entered the workforce, the situation was significantly different, and ‘cramming’ and ‘all-nighters’ were no longer an option. But since that was the only way I knew ‘how to get stuff done’, I ended up making things very stressful for myself – leading directly to the whole ‘burn out’ thing I mentioned earlier. In recovery from burn-out, I’ve learned (and I’m still learning) new ways of ‘how to get stuff done’ that allow me to pace things out more. In retrospect, I would have been much better off if I had started learning alternatives to cramming much earlier.

So, I’m suggesting that if ‘getting irrationally angry’ seems to be one of your most effective learning strategies, it’s probably not really a sustainable strategy in the long run. It’s not really healthy to be irrationally angry much of the time, just as it wasn’t healthy for me to be in panic/crisis mode (anxiety-driven) all the time.

I’m actually using WaniKani in a secondary way to practice learning in a slow, steady, incremental, not-panicking, not-a-crisis mode, and I’m finding it very helpful for my sanity actually. Since Japanese is something I’m just learning for my own sake, not for any job or for school, there’s no deadline pressure, so I’m able to use it that way, almost like a ‘therapy’ of sorts. :sweat_smile:

If you’re in a similar situation, where Japanese is not crucial for your job or school, maybe you could try using WK in a similar way, to practice learning without invoking your ‘irrationally angry’ mode. Just an idea, just thought I’d share my own experience. Cheers! :blush:

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歳 is also still widely in use, instead of 才!WK will teach it in the higher levels.

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I’m in the same boat – it’s not a life or death situation if it takes you years rather than months, and another thing to keep in mind is that Wanikani only teaches kanji and vocab – you still need to do the heavy lifting and master the grammar. It’s better for your sanity to come up with a plan and tools for how to overcome any obstacles rather than blaming the tools that already exist.

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There are also APIs that prompt you with on-yomi and kun-yomi so you know which is which (List of API and Third-Party Apps)

If you’ve got a complaint, there’s sure to be a userscript that will fix it.

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I didn’t see this kanji yet. Oh it going to be fun ^-^

It’s on level 59. Chop-chop! :stuck_out_tongue:

Ok i am going to see it next year then :slight_smile:

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