What do you mean by “actual vocabulary.” Is 山 not “actual vocabulary”?
Per WK: “ふじ山” is listed as a vocabulary word. However, it is using the kanji reading, not the vocabulary reading. I understand that as a vocabulary word, 山 is read as やま. Mt. Fuji is a vocabulary term that does not use the vocabulary reading. Both are called “vocabulary,” but using different readings.
The “vocabulary reading” of 富士山 is ふじさん. Each word has its own “vocabulary reading.” The way to read that vocabulary item. There isn’t some other “master vocabulary reading” to refer back to.
And just the same way, the vocabulary reading of 山 is やま. They’re their own entities.
@Belthazar explained it well above (and below), so I’ll step away if you want to let him know if there are things you don’t understand about his explanation, since mine isn’t as good.
I think you’re thinking about the readings in the wrong way. Japanese has two general types of readings:
- kun’yomi, which are native Japanese readings that were added to the kanji, and
- on’yomi, which are the Chinese readings of the kanji that came along when the kanji were brought over from China.
Both of these readings are used in Japanese vocabulary, all the time (with some rare exceptions - the occasional kanji has only an on’yomi or only a kun’yomi, or some reading occurs so rarely that you’ll never encounter it).
WaniKani, meanwhile, has three types of lessons:
- Radicals - these are the pieces that make up kanji
- Kanji - what WaniKani is here to teach you
- Vocabulary - real life words which feature the kanji in action
There’s a reading introduced during the kanji lessons so that you have a sound to learn along with the meaning, but it’s not “the kanji reading”, it’s one of the readings that the kanji happens to possess. When you learn vocabulary, you get to see that reading in action, but you also get introduced to the kanji’s (one or more) other reading(s) in other vocabulary items.
So when you get 山 in a kanji lesson, and then you’re taught it’s read as さん, it’s not that さん is “the kanji reading” but rather that さん is one of the ways that 山 may be pronounced. (In this case, it’s the kanji’s on’yomi, while やま is the kun’yomi.)
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The point I’m trying to make is that it would make more sense to have something like 富士山 listed as, say, a word, for example, 山 (やま) as the vocabulary as this is how you would refer to “mountain” in a general sentence, and 山 (さん) as one of the possible kanji readings as this is how it gets read in 富士山 .
I hope this better clears up what I’m obviously getting wrong.
山 and 富士山 are both words and they are included in the vocabulary of level 1.
Vocabulary mean “a list or collection of words”, right ?
So I’m confused at the point you are trying to make.
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I guess it’s worth noting that the level 1 vocab item is ふじ山 simply because 富 and 士 are taught later, so I’m not sure if that’s confusing things to some extent. Or maybe not. But I figured I’d just mention it.
Once all the kanji are taught, it appears again as an item in level 31.
I clearly don’t have a very good way with words so I’ll just leave this so as to not clutter up this section anymore. Cheers all.
Well, to be entirely fair, it’s included as ふじ山 in level one, before being re-introduced as 富士山 at level 31…
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Thanks, I suppose this is getting more at my confusion. I guess for me, personally, it would be more efficient to have maybe 2 or so common readings listed as “kanji” readings, then just jump straight into different contexts where those are used instead of showing a single character for both “kanji” and “vocabulary” at the get go.
I know you said you were gonna leave this, but I think maybe I can clear this up for you with an analogy. You’re far from the only new person confused by this, so hopefully future new people can learn from this as well.
Imagine you’re a Japanese person learning English. You start using this service called AlligatorCrab that teaches you the letters used in English. It teaches you the letter “i”, and teaches the most common ‘reading’ (that is, pronunciation) of that letter (in this case, that’s the sound i makes in the word igloo). Since that’s the most common sound for that letter to make, AlligatorCrab just calls it the “Letter Reading.”
Then, you get the vocabulary words for i. AlligatorCrab teaches you “I” (like, I as in me, myself) and “igloo”, and asks you for the pronunciations of those words, which it calls their “Vocabulary Readings”.
“Hey, wait a minute!” you say. “How come the vocabulary word “igloo” uses that sound, the Letter Reading, but the vocabulary word “I” sounds like “eye”? Which pronunciation of i is the Vocabulary Reading, and which one’s the Letter Reading?”
Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Each word has its own pronunciation. When AlligatorCrab says “Vocabulary Reading”, it means “pronunciation of this word.” When it says “Letter Reading”, it means “the most common pronunciation of this letter.”
But here’s the thing: you’re not wrong if you say the pronunciation of the letter i sounds like “eye.” Sometimes it does sound like that. Luckily, if AlligatorCrab asks you for the Letter Reading for i, and you say “eye”, it doesn’t say you’re wrong; it just tells you that’s not the pronunciation it’s looking for, that it wanted the most common pronunciation, and to please try again.
That’s how WaniKani works. “Kanji Reading” doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just (what the WaniKani devs believe is) the most common pronunciation of that kanji. If you put やま as the Kanji Reading for 山, it doesn’t mark it wrong. It wiggles, and tells you “WaniKani is looking for the on’yomi reading,” and you can try again. And, if you go to the Kanji page for 山, WaniKani / Kanji / 山, it does list both readings, just like you want it to.
The only reason you’re confused is that 山 happens to be a word by itself, in the same way that the letter I is a word by itself. When they say “やま is the Vocabulary Reading for 山,” they don’t mean that “山 is pronounced やま in every vocabulary word where it appears,” they just mean “山 is pronounced やま when it appears by itself, as its own word.” Again, the Vocabulary Reading for “I” is “eye”, but that DOESN’T mean the Vocabulary Reading for “igloo” is “eye-gloo.”
Does that clear it up?
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If AlligatorCrab worked like WaniKani, it would have taught you “I” (myself) as the first vocabulary reading. THEN it would have introduced words such as “igloo,” “ice,” etc. “I” (myself) can be though of as a standalone word in a sentence. It is it’s own entity, and is just the same as the letter “I,” but actually used as a noun in a sentence, like the mountain example that Leebo provided. The words like “igloo” and “ice” are analogous to a single kanji character with hiragana before or after it, which is what WK provides you with after you learn the kanji and vocab reading of a character.
It would be much simpler to just provide a few common readings from the get go (WK already does this with many kanji readings already, it just gives you the freedom to choose which one to input) and THEN jump straight into applied examples. Given that kanji are, an albeit monstrous version, functionally similar to our own alphabet, we can continue with the “I” example.
So, AlligatorCrab would then provide the letter “I,” then list that it can be pronounced as “eye” or “ee,” etc. This would be similar to the pink Kanji reading. Then it would jump straight into example words, like “I” (myself), which is just the character (letter) by itself, and then vocabular words which use the character (letter), to make those sounds. Instead of saying that “I” (myself) is a vocab “reading” (it’s most certainly not, it’s a word by itself!) this clears up any misinterpretations.
As I read through this, I’m realizing that my gripe may be less with the “vocabulary” distinction and more with the use of the word “reading.”
Ah, is it possible your confusion here is because the vocab card for ふじ山 happened to come up in your lesson queue before the vocab card for 山?
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So if I’m understanding, you would rather learn both やま and さん in the kanji lesson?
It raises the issue of do you require both answers, etc, but they probably did think about it in the design process.
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No, I learned the single vocab for 山 (yama) first.
It raises the issue of do you require both answers, etc, but they probably did think about it in the design process.
So, given that kanji readings are of course very context dependent, I think that if you are just shown the kanji character by itself, either would be accepted, but once you start plugging it in with other kanji or kana, then you would have to remember which one fits where.
It would relatively simple with 山, because it has only one common reading in each category. The difficulty would be if you did that with something like 生. Right now you have to answer with the onyomi in the kanji lesson for 生, and if you choose one of the many kunyomi readings it will shake and ask you to try again.
Your proposed way would allow someone to pass the kanji lesson for 生 while only ever answering with one obscure reading.
Just something to consider. The current way keeps things from getting out of hand like that.
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I think part of the confusion is that the example of 山 is both a Kanji in 熟語 and also represents a word when on its own. For other Kanji that don’t also represent words, they can’t ever stand by themself and won’t get a vocabulary listing.
It’s like the word “Mount”*. You only ever use it as part of a name, e.g. Mount Fuji. When it’s on it’s own, the word is “mountain”.
So on the pink background Kanji review, WK wants “mount” as the word used when it’s part of a compound word. On the purple background as a vocabulary item, WK wants the word “mountain”.
*For mountain, not to be confused with the verb 
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That makes sense.
Cheers all, I’m making it harder than it need be.
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I wonder how he’ll feel about all the readings of 人
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