Not too long ago I learned the kanji 実, which wanikani says means truth/reality. In satori, I came across this kanji as a vocab word meaning “fruit” and pronounced み. How come wanikani is not showing this meaning too in the vocab? Apparently is not that hard to come across it.
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Oh, that’s so interesting actually, I had no idea it has both meanings!
I think normally you’d use 果物 for fruit, cool to know there is another word.
I’m not sure how they would teach both tho, since each meaning has its own reading.
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There are several instances on WK where other words exist with the same kanji representation, and WK has never devised a way to handle it.
For instance, they teach 額 (sum / picture frame) but not 額 (forehead) because they two are different words with totally unrelated readings (がく and ひたい respectively).
At this point it seems kind of unlikely that they’re going to add those kinds of double entries.
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Ahh, that’s a shame. I guess it is a design constrain/flaw in the system, not allowing to have multiple vocab words with the same kanji, ie, identifying each vocab entry in the database by their kanji won’t allow they to have two words with the same kanji. It would be interesting to get an answer from someone from the staff though!
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It’s a relatively rare meaning. I’ve seen it used exactly twice since I’ve been consuming content? One was in the 小さな森のオオカミさん book club, which, if I’m remembering correctly, did trip up a bunch of people. The second time was recently in an anime, I don’t even remember what it was exactly.
Tl;dr, it’s a fairly rare word, and WK is teaching kanji first and foremost, a random “fruit” meaning among the “reality” “truth” etc would just muddy the water.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a shake answer btw
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They could probably just add the other meaning to the vocabulary as part of a compound word and not as a stand alone if they really want to add the other meaning, or if they don’t want to put it as an actual item write a short mention of it.
But in the grand scheme of things, I see Wanikani as an introduction to kanji not an exhaustive kanji meaning resource, and the idea is to get the foot in the door and the rest is up to the user, if you get what I mean.
They might reconsider, though if being asked about it. Sometimes all you have to do is ask them about it.
Hey @Mods would you be so kind and elaborate about those two kanji and if you ever add their other meanings to wanikani? You do use it for one of them as you can see below.
実 fruit
額 forehead
(this might give you some hope @talkingalone)
the 実 version exists on wanikani as part of a compound word 熊之実 clown fish, however the explanation is this:
I want you to try to bear this truth and that’s these kanji make up the word clownfish! Do you think a clownfish is this bear? I’m telling the truth! Maybe.
and then the meaning just ignores the み as an actual alternative meaning with this explanation:
This word consists of the kun’yomi readings for all the kanji. You haven’t learned these readings for 之 or 実 yet though, so here’s a mnemonic to help you:
If you get too close to a clownfish, it will hide inside its stinging anemone and shout, "YOU DON’T KNOW ME (のみ)! It’s true, you don’t know this clownfish, but you want to. I guess all of them are afraid of strangers though… how will you know me if you don’t give me a chance, clownfish?!
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While it’s rarer than the “truth” meaning, I don’t think it’s really rare as such. JPDB found it in 672 books and lists it as being in the top 16500 (compared to 3275 books and top 2500 for "truth):
FWIW, I see it on a regular basis, but I probably read different books 
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It’s also used as such in One Piece for the ‘magic system’ of devil fruits: 悪魔の実. That alone making it somewhat widespread 
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I’ve been here since 2016 and I know it’s been brought up before. People are welcome to continue trying though.
I see it every trip to the snack aisle!
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Just did, considering they apparently use the other reading in clownfish (you can see in the edit) they might get on board, maybe even with your suggestion.
I’ve been here minus a 4 years hiatus since 2017, and they’ve really changed the way they implement suggestion this past year, so let’s see what they say.
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I’m not really sure I have a suggestion for what they should do with it. I don’t know precisely why they haven’t done it to this point. Would it need to be like two entries and go 額 (not ひたい) for one and 額 (not がく) for the other? I’m not really sure.
Thank you for the thorough explanation! I found this in the third chapter of The Jam Maker in Satori. This is a beginner’s story, so I thought this meaning couldn’t be that obscure. It is true, though, that the story is about jam, so it is expected to see a lot of vocabulary regarding fruits.
Well, this was an interesting attempt, I typed forehead in the search box to see if it yields anything but the radical and guess what?
The choice they made with the picture frame is blocking them from using the 訓読み.
It’s definitely a choice considering ひたい is mention first on Goo, so it’s not an obscure meaning. Still the only way I can see it being fixed is by using a compound word for one of them, preferably がく if there is one for it, and putting ひたい as a stand alone, since がく is already being taught as the 音読み.
I’m familiar with Satori reader, so this makes perfect sense to 実 so it is probably the 実.
For future reference when you encounter a reading/meaning you’re not familiar with, checking the bottom of that kanji page of the kanji on wanakani can sometimes show you that meaning/reading on the list of found in Vocabulary on a level you’ve haven’t reached yet, so it is a start.
Searching for ‘fruit’ didn’t bring 実 though…
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Too many agriculture books. I know you want difficult stuff, but this is ridiculous
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I see 木の実 all the time, too, sounds like the start of a horticultural book club 
I’m so surprised to see where that lands on the frequency lists, I would have guessed it was in the top 5k
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I was surprised as well that it’s so low… 
but then again I have no idea how good jpdb is in telling apart the different readings tbh.
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In general it’s pretty bad. The impression I get is that if there are furigana in the input text it will use them, but otherwise if there are two nouns or readings written the same way it just picks one and assigns everything that way. If you look at its example sentences categorised under じつ there are plenty where it’s obviously supposed to be み but has been misclassified, like:
この木はよい実がたくさんなる。 This tree bears a lot of good fruit.
その木は実がいっぱいだ。 The tree is abundant in fruit.
(and then it further muddies the water by auto adding furigana to everything, so you can’t tell what was furigana in the input texts and what is a possibly incorrectly applied computer guess at the reading…)
Though actually I think it must be trying something more complicated than that – in the examples for み it has:
実は食堂で彼を見るのは初めてだったりする。
but I found the web novel that line is from, and with a little more context:
イオにメロルオレンジの果実水を出してもらって休んでいると、集計を終わったらしいレメナ爺さんが食堂に入ってきた。実は食堂で彼を見るのは初めてだったりする。
爺さんの手には２枚の羊皮紙が握られていた。俺たちのテスト結果だ。
it clearly should be read じつ (and has no original furigana, at least in that version).
Edit: the ones I find particularly irritating are where you look up a word by reading, eg みなしご, and it gives you a word entry for it where it has furigana on the headword that match what you searched for, but all the examples are auto furiganaed for a completely different reading (こじ in this case).
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Hi there! I’ll pass along this suggestion to the team. As others have pointed out, while we’d love to include all of the possible meanings and readings for these characters, because our system wasn’t set up to handle them, we haven’t been able to add these in the past.
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Thank you @RachelG
Just to update, our team has been thinking about how to address these. The problem is that if we add those meanings to the current subject, we wouldn’t know which one the users would learn. We’re working on how to handle these type of items though.
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