There’s no audio for kanji, only words, and こう is not a word for 口 or 工
The word mouth is pronounced くち and 工 doesn’t typically appear alone.
They are read こう when the appear in compounds.
Thanks for your help. I am however really confused now…
So let me talk about mouth as an example…
Its radical is written こう…? And it has a meaning of mouth… But it isnt the word mouth… Right?(but it can be used as the word mouth but the kanji has a different sound to the radical)?
But when used in words…
くち
でぐち
じんこう
Thats 3 different pronunciations?
The middle one is just a sound change that you’ll get used to over time. It’s called rendaku if you want to look it up.
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Hi, I’m new here 
Wonderful app, Wanikani is amazing Hope to learn japanese fairly quickly. Thank you, bye
Besides Leebo post about rendaku, the same kanji can have many on’yomi and many kun’yomi readings, it depends on the other kanji and kana around. In the case of mouth kanji, there are two on’yomi readings (koo and ku) and one kun’yomi (kuchi), see this links for examples of words using these different readings: 口 #kanji - Jisho.org
when using the kanji Mountain 山 it is pronounced やま (ya ma).
but when speaking of mount fuji you would expect it to be fuji ya ma. so why is ふじ山 pronounced fuji san
confused
edit… as ive progressed thru the lessons now artificial AND population are pronounced じんこう
both identical… how can you tell the difference then??
For 山, さん is the onyomi. The reading borrowed from Chinese. As you might know, the Japanese had no writing system and borrowed kanji from China, and they imported the pronunciation (or their best imitation of it) with the writing.
For homophones, it should be no different from them in English. Context.
How do you know the difference between deer and dear? Because even though they sound the same, they aren’t going to be used the same way.
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that makes much more sense. thankyou very much. think i need to keep learning at face value rather then trying to over analyse.
Hello. How do I do more lessons.
you just wait after getting correct answers. its spaced repititon learning so it deliberately doesn’t overload you … at the start its really slow. as things move on there will be lots more lessons.
Welcome to WK! You have to review your radicals correctly a few times in a row, until you get them to Guru level. Once they’re Guru’d, you’ll unlock new kanji you can study.
Just here to say hello I am new and glad to be here!
Hi, I’m a bit confused about the overall learning system. I get the SRS stuff, but what I don’t know is if i should be studying kanji i’ve learned inbetween SRS times. To me, the explanation of “right as you’re about to forget it” implies that I shouldn’t, but then there’s a “Critical Items” list which to me is like “focus on these! you’re bad at these!” Any advice from you guys?
Just reached level 3 and love it so far/subscribed.
Thanks!
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The most practical advice I would give is to review items you got wrong right after the review session. For that, I can advise these scripts:
(taken from a guide I’m writing)
-
Wanikani Self-Study Quiz: Have you ever wished to review a certain type of items or from a specific level? This is it. This script allows you do an extra and personalized reviewing of any items you’ve already learned on WK. Do not worry, as this script will not influence the SRS level of items.
-
WaniKani Open Framework Additional Filters: This script serves as an upgrade to the Self-Study one I mentioned above. Basically, it will add filters such as “most recent items learned” and “leeches” (most difficult items for you) to your Self-Study script. For the distance of just a couple clicks, you can get all the extra reinforcement on the items you need the most
If you’re not aware of what scripts are:
In short, userscripts for Wanikani are tools developed by a third-party (usually by WK users) which goal is to improve your experience with Wanikani. This community offers quite a big amount of these scripts which in my opinion, are a game changer in allowing you do have a better experience with Wanikani and learn its content more efficiently.
Here’s a little help on how to install them:
- Here’s a Visual Guide on how to install an userscript.
- These scripts will require you to install the Wanikani Open Framework.
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so, just to confirm, you’re saying that i should explicitly NOT study kanji outside of the SRS schedule in order to optimize my memorization experience?
SRS tries to minimize the number of reviews, so you can study kanji in addition, but this has only reduced benefit. However, WK is not enough to recall the kanji fast and accurately, you should start reading as soon as you can make some sense of a text.
Of course what you should not do is to study the kanji just before coming up for review, and then get everything correct in the WK reviews, even the ones you couldn’t remember even seeing before.
ah okay, that makes sense. Do you think once i get something to guru that it could go into a personal review schedule at that point, or do you think that may still be too early? I think early apprentice is probably a bit too early for myself. The basic concept of “wait until you’re about to forget it” is really what was throwing me off in terms of doing outside review.
Thanks for the help!
It depends what you are trying to achieve. If you do exactly the same thing in you personal reviews as in WK there is only a small benefit. You are trying to get things into long-term memory, so not seeing something for a while helps as well.
If you do reviews like English->Japanese as in kaniwani.com, practice writing, or read up on the exact definition and connotations of a word you can start early. The more different angles you have on a kanji the better you will remember it.
Personally I use the self study quiz script to review the new kanji directly after a lesson a few times until I get then correct quickly, and then just rely on WK and seeing kanji in the wild.
Finally, kanji is not everything, ideally your grammar knowledge should match your kanji knowledge, no point in knowing ten variations of chastity but unable to understand some kids story
Hello
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Hello 