Kanjis changed from on to kun?

[talkingalone]

Hey there. I’ve been out for three weeks on holidays and didn’t activate vacation mode. I am finding that many kanjis have switched from on’yomi to kun’yomi. For instance, before leaving three weeks ago, 叩 was こう but now it is たた. I know that Wanikani is being constantly updated, but I have noticed this with some other kanjis too, like 思.

[catwithcookies]

I noticed this today too. I don’t like it. OTL

[simias]

There have been a few changes lately yeah, 北 is one that was discussed at length recently:

北 (north) kanji reading mnemonic changed?

(I checked Content Updates - WaniKani Community but nothing there…) Did the reading mnemonic for 北 (north) kanji changed recently? I could swear it was “hoe” + “cookies” (ほく) but I was just having a review and it wasn’t accepting that and it turns out that for kanji reading it’s now using “keytar” (wth is that…) and vocab for norh fallbacks to that as well (previously it was “kit” to go to norh or something like that (?!)).

@talkingalone

I have noticed this with some other kanjis too, like 思.

I’m happy that I finished Wanikani a while ago because I really dislike these changes. Learning kun with the kanji only really makes sense to me if the onyomi is truly rare, but 不思議、思想 or 意思 for instance are extremely common words. Sure, 思う is even more common by a long shot but I always find it confusing when the readings are taught “backwards” like this.

Also the kun reading is おも・う, not おも which is just a meaningless truncated reading, which is another reason I dislike when Wanikani does that. It makes no sense to just learn おも without okurigana in my opinion.

[Squintina]

I absolutely hate when kanji use an okurigana-based kun’yomi reading as its accepted reading.

The whole point of WK is to make us better at taking educated guesses when reading. The okurigana readings are effectively all vocab, with a fairly small finite number, and thus I’m already going to learn them there. Whether they’re more common is thus irrelevant because I’m 100% going to learn them in their own entry.

Whereas for compound words, WK is not going to teach every compound word in existence as this is a far larger list. They teach enough to fortify the readings and any common special readings. It therefore makes more sense for the kanji to be associated with the common reading for compound words since new compound words in native material are when we would most likely apply a kanji reading instead of a memorized vocab reading. And typically the most common compound reading is the on’yomi (there are some exceptions, but even for those, it would most likely be a non-okurigana reading).

[KanjiOzeki]

@simias

Learning kun with the kanji only really makes sense to me if the onyomi is truly rare, but 不思議、思想 or 意思 for instance are extremely common words. Sure, 思う is even more common by a long shot but I always find it confusing when the readings are taught “backwards” like this.

Also the kun reading is おも・う, not おも which is just a meaningless truncated reading, which is another reason I dislike when Wanikani does that. It makes no sense to just learn おも without okurigana in my opinion.

I have to agree with this. It really hurts the ability to know if a reading is On’yomi or Kun’yomi. I’d much prefer to learn the On’yomi with the Kanji [unless it’s a truly useless reading] and then get the Kun’yomi with the vocabulary. Consistency is the key here.

I get that they want to do content updates, and am not against this. But please:

• give an explanation of what the point is when doing such a change
• explain what the vision is on these changes in general (I’d hope there is a bigger picture and they aren’t making ad hoc changes)
• Make sure substantial*changes for already learned items appear in the ‘app’ itself rather than having to dig through the forum. (and hide changes for not learned items, because they don’t matter. If people want to get the full list, they can dig through the forum)
  *That is: not updated context sentences, or shuffling around of levels, but changes in meaning etc.

[Wait]

@KanjiOzeki

I have to agree with this. It really hurts the ability to know if a reading is On’yomi or Kun’yomi. I’d much prefer to learn the On’yomi with the Kanji [unless it’s a truly useless reading] and then get the Kun’yomi with the vocabulary. Consistency is the key here.

+1
I wholeheartedly agree with this. There are some kanji that I perpetually miss because I consistently confuse the on’yomi and kun’yomi, specifically because WK taught me the kun’yomi first.
If the on’yomi is common enough that it will come up in any of the WK vocab words, then that is the reading that should be taught with the kanji, for the sake of consistency.

[talkingalone]

I have always taken for granted that when a kanji is taught with kun’yomi is because the on’yomi reading is very rare, but then, when I go to Japan, I sometimes find these kanjis in jukugo words, and find myself not knowing how to pronounce them, so I have to agree with what you guys are saying. Also, there are simply many kanji to learn, and having to think about whether a pronunciation was 'on or 'kun when doing reviews is a pain in the ass.