If there is a vocab with 2 kanjis or kanji + hiragana it’s fine, but when the vocab is the same as the kanji, I keep getting it wrong. Any tips?
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A vocab consisting of single kanji usually uses the kun’yomi.
But when a kanji is kanji – it usually uses the on’yomi.
There are exceptions, though – there always are – but it is a good rule of thumb.
Another important thing to remember is that in real life you won’t encounter kanji as kanji – they will always be either parts of words or words themselves. Like, if you see a package with 魚 written on it, it would be the whole word and therefore use the kun’yomi さかな and not the on’yomi ぎょ…
Sorry, I’m probably only making things more confusing 
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When vocab has 1 Kanji, think of it as to be used as a meaningful unit in the sentence, rather than as a part of another word. (Therefore, if you see from reading or listening…)
Seeing a Kanji being quizzed, think of how it may be used in several vocabularies, i.e. possibility of building several meaningful units. Often, that would be On’yomi. (But also implying vocab knowledge.)
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I don’t remember which ones are kun’yomi and which ones on’yomi, but most often, the reading WK assigns to kanji is the one used in longer words, and the other one is usually for single kanji words. You will remember it better when you learn more words with the same kanji.
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Generally if it’s just one kanji by itself (no trailing hiragana), you can say with maybe 75% certainty that it’s a kun’yomi reading (in the other 25% of cases, it’s usually at least a little formal). If it has trailing hiragana (aside from じる or する, which tend to produce on’yomi readings) it’s almost certainly kun’yomi. If it has 2 or more kanji and no hiragana, it’s probably on’yomi.
On’yomi and kun’yomi don’t correspond to WK’s kanji and vocab readings perfectly (it’s more common for the kanji reading to be on’yomi and the vocabulary reading to be kun’yomi, but there’s enough exceptions that you probably shouldn’t rely on it), so you should probably learn what reading is being used in each case. This will become really natural as you learn more kanji, as there are strict rules to what can and can’t be on’yomi as well as more and less frequent on’yomi syllables (for example ぬ is never used as an on’yomi reading despite being perfectly valid according to a cursory glance).
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Ohhh dont worry, I get it^^. But I haven’t been differentiating between kun’yomi and on’yomi…its more like what wanikani gives, I learn it. In this case Ill probs get more confused between which one is kun’yomi and with in on’yomi haha.
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Ahh yeah that makes sense. Kind of like reverse learning. For most cases, if its using reading1 in longer words with another kanji or hiragana attached, them for the single kanji vocab for it would use the other reading. Thanks for you input!
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Yikes…the rules and thier exceptions are really confusing huh. Yeah, I’d rather go towards the brute force mechanism for learning to differentiate the readings for different vocab than be stuck in making rules which I’ll end up confusing myself…anyway thanks for you input!
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