So, I’ve been encountering a lot of vocabulary where the information section says “well…you didn’t learn the kun’yomi but here” and it’s super irritating. Why wouldn’t you teach the kun’yomi version before trying to teach a vocabulary word? Or am I just supposed to write the kun’yomi portion down myself and do the extra studying offline? It’s super effing irritating and yeah I’m just venting here but good God. Any scripts or anything to help with this problem?
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Unfortunately, if they did try to teach you all the common readings for kanji before giving you vocab that includes it, there could easily be far more “kanji-reading” lessons.
As one example, the kanji 生 has the following readings: 「い」 「う」 「お」 「は」 「き」 「ま」 「なま」 「 な む」 「せい」
There are a number of other kanji like this as well. But, such readings tend to exist for/in/with specific words. The good news is, there’s usually only two or three readings you’ll need to learn. WaniKani seems to tend to try to teach the most common reading for a kanji. But, since there can be more than one, the vocab is designed to help you learn the others. (Which tend to be used in specific types of words, anyway.)
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It’s better to learn the alternative readings through vocabulary instead of trying to learn them all independently. It shouldn’t require any extra studying. Just utilize the vocab reading mnemonics the same way you would the kanji reading mnemonics.
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Thats what the mnemonic is for. You dont need to study outside of WK to learn that reading, just try to remember the mnemonic as you do with everything else.
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That’s the standard of how they introduce the kun’yomi readings. When you learn the kanji, you learn on’yomi because that’s how it’s typically read in jukugo words (compound words, like you learn 女 as じょ because that’s how it’s read in 少女、女子、and 女王）and when you learn it as vocabulary, you get the kun’yomi, which is mainly used when the word is by itself (おんな).
It’s difficult to memorize two readings at once, so they separate it out. In words where the on’yomi is rarely used, or the kun’yomi is used in jukugo words, they’ll teach the kun’yomi with the kanji. In vocab where they haven’t taught the readings before, it usually includes a mnemonic, so you’re meant to memorize it using the vocab.
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If let’s say WK taught the onyomi reading first for a kanji but you’re curious about the kunyomi reading, you can check the individual page for the respective kanji in WK (usually the reading that wasn’t picked in the kanji lesson will still be shown but greyed out). You can also check other resources for reference. I’m not sure if there’s any existing userscript that helps on this part. Though yeah like what others pointed out, a lot of people here (including me) finds it easier to learn the other readings in the context of the vocab instead of learning every single reading beforehand.
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Generally speaking, it’s better to learn the onyomi with the kanji and the kunyomi with the words. Most of the times, this is what WK does and it’s what is most effective. Learning both at once you can quickly get confused as to which reading is which, so learning just the most common onyomi reading to have a (probably correct) phonetic come up when encountering a kanji in the wild rather than reading a word ten times with different readings not knowing which one is correct.
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Yes, it happens, but I am at the point I dont get frustrated by that anymore, yesterday it happened with ‘sediment’ 土砂
the ‘sha’ part I didnt know all this time since I learned the kanji for sand because they didnt teach it, but I just memorized it and I am ok with it.
While having to keep learning new readings for the same kanji can be irritating, I think it’s overall better to space them out instead of trying to dump all of them on you at once. Some kanji can have a lot of different readings, and I think it could get overwhelming to try and learn all of them at once. On a related note - in my experience, learning any less-common readings with the word they’re used in makes it easier for that reading to stick.
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Be glad WK teaches you any readings. Traditionally, you’re supposed to brute force all of the words and their according readings into your brain.
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This is rough sometimes I agree. What I like to do is as these come up is to try and add on to the mneumonic story I had for the kanji to include the new reading. Unfortunately some of these kanji have so many readings it would be confusing to include them all from the get go.
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I had the same initial thought as you in the beginning, I wondered why I couldn’t learn both, but after a while, gaining more experience with reading and such, I realized that WaniKani’s method works just fine.
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true story.
Even when I was studying Japanese for the first in Japan in a University there, they wanted us to memorize all kanji without any other source or mnemonic, it was quite hell 
maybe one of the reasons I quit studying japanese for 10 years, only WK made me get interested again in learning the language.
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Ty for this comment. One of the few that actually commented and took time to relate to my struggle and offer sound advice.
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I appreciate it. Thank you for showing some positive insight.
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