hi! is it important to know if a reading is onyomi/kunyomi/ written in katakana/hiragana? i always get confused
Not sure exactly what you’re referring to, but I usually tell beginners that it’s not critical to worry about distinguishing onyomi and kunyomi early on.
If you’re talking about how dictionaries usually put onyomi readings in katakana and kunyomi readings in hiragana, that’s just a dictionary convention.
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ahh, i didnt know that it was just a dictionary convention and i thought it would important to distinguish onyomi/kunyomi. thank you for answering!
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Try the Self-Study Quiz script. I use it to review new lessons or items I’m getting wrong a lot. It has an audio quiz mode that I swear I’m going to start using once I catch up in KaniWani (another English to Japanese site), do more grammar on Bunpro, do another chapter in Genki…
How do I know which kanji reading Wanikani is asking for? It’s pretty frustrating when I’m prompted with 日 and I type in にち, but it’s marked as incorrect since the correct answer was ひ.
Another example is when 月 is prompted, I get marked wrong for がつ/month when WK wanted つき/moon.
There’s no context, and it’s made even more confusing because the 日 prompt is occurring in the midst of 一日, and 月 is mixed in with 一月, 二月, 三月, etc., all of which use the がつ reading.
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For a vocab (purple) item, only one reading is acceptable most of the time, because it represents a word, not just the broad concept of a kanji. It’s the reading that is used when the kanji is used as a word alone. In that situation 日 is not にち and 月 is not がつ.
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Yes, you have to keep aware of the colour of the background. So a single character might be on a pink background (in which case you have to remember the reading you learnt originally for the kanji). Or it might be on a purple background (which is the one you learn later on as vocabulary).
You’ll get used to it… hang in there 
(having said that, here’s me on level 13 and I’ve still got 日 bouncing around as a leech because I keep putting in the wrong answer… it’s like I’ve got a mental block about that one and I have no idea why!)
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Thanks for explaining - at least for me, relying on the color is difficult since I have color-deficient vision.
I wish Wanikani wouldn’t mark correct readings of vocabulary as incorrect, and instead put a warning like it does when it wants the on’yomi reading of a kanji.
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It does also say “Vocab Meaning” or “Vocab Reading” to tell you it’s a vocab item. The font size for vocab items is also different (vocab are smaller than kanji, which are smaller than radicals).
That’s the thing, though, the other readings aren’t correct for the vocab. They are possible readings for that kanji in other circumstances, but if the system always told you “go ahead and try again” it wouldn’t be reinforcing the correct reading. With kanji items, either category of reading is a correct answer, so there’s no punishment for choosing the one that wasn’t taught earlier.
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Well as mentioned above, it seems like even experienced users slip up between “kanji readings” and “vocabulary readings”. Thanks for explaining the system - I guess when it comes to vocabulary, Wanikani prefers being prescriptive versus encouraging. 
This is kind of the point of this kind of “you have to enter the answer” style SRS systems though, right? There are other systems out there, like Anki, where you can just look at both sides of a flashcard and judge for yourself if it should move forward or not. That style isn’t for me, but it’s plenty popular.
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I don’t really think this is WK’s fault though, this is just a part of the Japanese language. Kanji can be read multiple ways, but within a given word there’s only one way to read a kanji. The kanji 日 can be read as にち, じつ, or ひ depending on what word it’s in. Since all answers are correct WK will shake if you enter a correct one that’s not the one it’s asking for. If you want to say “day” in Japanese however you have to say ひ since that’s the word, saying にち or じつ would just be wrong, hence why WK handles this case like a wrong answer.
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Not really a question, more a venting: I am getting slaughtered by verbs. It feels like every two hours, the same ten or so verbs come up and I miss like all but one of them every time. Then, the one I actually got comes back a couple hours later along with the ones I missed and I miss it this time so it goes back in the pile.
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You have my sympathy, okayfrog! My top tip would be to take a bit of time out and write your own mnemonic for each one. Sometimes for me the WK ones are about something I don’t know about, or they don’t have the right sound in British English. Or sometimes I can just think of something much more obvious that relates to the word, or makes a silly image in my head that relates to the concept and the sound. That’s my idea for you, anyway. We will crush those leeches!!
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Hi there! I’m new to WaniKani and loving it.
For now, I have just one question: does the time to answer matter? I want to write the kanji down before hitting enter to train my handwriting, but I don’t know if this is detrimental do my progression or note.
No, you aren’t timed on your answer.
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But I think if you idle for too long (5+ minutes on a question) it may time you out of the review.
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Hey. it’s possible I’m going crazy, but did the kanji for think (思, lvl 6) get stealth changed recently? I could have sworn it used to take the onyomi reading of shi as the answer and the mnemonic was something along the lines of finding a heart in a rice field and you THINK it might belong to sheep (SHI); something like that. But now it takes the kunyomi reading of omo with a hint about moe from the simpsons. Ive had new mnemonics past fall 2018 ON the whole time for reference.
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You’re not going crazy, it got changed today, they announced it in the content updates:
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Thank you! I didn’t think to check there, but I probably should have.
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