(new user whine) readings are so hard :(

WaniKani
1

cue self-explanatory screenshot

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… okay it’s not that bad (learning zone yippie!), but i’ve been feeling pretty frustrated with the learning flow for readings

my absolute least favorite sentence to see in an item description: “When learning the kanji, you didn’t learn that reading, so here’s a mnemonic to help you”

this is almost always my biggest stumbling point… once i’ve drilled a kanji up to guru knowing only one reading, and then newly unlocked vocab intends to teach the other readings. the familiar reading tries really hard to block out recalling the unfamiliar reading. sometimes this works in reverse too, if a kanji has a lot of vocab using the different reading, it might be hard to recall the first one learned with the kanji when it’s up as a guru level review.

the mnemonics aren’t very helpful for remembering which reading to use, if i get the multiple mnemonics for an item mixed up as well, or if one of the mnemonics is easy to remember while the other one just isnt.

i’m not actually implying that there is anything wrong with the system here. part of me wants to say, maybe it would be easier after all if we were asked to drill all of the important meanings from the beginning… but i’d guess that in practice that is just trading one mechanism of confusion for another

it ends up feeling like a necessary bit of rote memorization, incongruent with how guided and easy the rest of the system is. it gets annoying getting so frequently stuck in reviews, spending several minutes trying to claw my brain for something i know i should know, and then that feeling of “oh, right, duh” after failing and checking the answer

just had to vent this a little, sorry for excessive negativity :sweat_smile: it’s all just part of the process. i’m doing my best to trust the advice that getting some things wrong is important for long term retention, but that doesnt make it feel less bad to get things wrong every day!

2

Venting about Japanese Kanji readings is totally justified. There’s Ateji, total special readings and bosses like 生 that have like 20? different readings. No rhyme and reason sometimes in compounds if it is read kunyomi or onyomi, etc., etc.
Whoever came up with the idea to borrow Chinese for the Japanese writing system and on top of that did such a terrible job should be deeply ashamed.

Honestly a bad idea. All the 生 readings I brought up earlier would be impossible to learn without the associated words. It would not help you to know there are 20 possibilities, and you could choose at random XD. (生 #kanji - Jisho.org)

The only thing that actually helps is to engage with the language a fuck-ton. Reading, listening, drilling SRS until it just “works” and sticks in your mind.
The amount of times I struggle with 夜 in the last few weeks is absurd. Never sure if it is や or よ in the 5 million compounds it is in (夜風、夜気、夜空、夜食、夜明け、夜具、夜更かし、夜間、夜中, … (could keep on going with the alternation forever)) :frowning:

(sorry I took over your thread and vented myself)

3

Regarding the 音読み reading, I think you need to be very familiar with at least one vocabulary word for it to stick, especially since the reading mnemonics are mostly useless.

There is “in general” one dominant reading and usually one very common word as well that represents the kanji meaning well so I’d advise to put as much attention as possible to that word if it is not already familiar, rather than the kanji reading by itself.

Get VERY familiar with that vocabulary in context not just by itself.
If there are other readings, also the familiary/context with vocabulary is the only way I get to memorise it.
As far qs how my own brain is wired, readings by themselves are absolutely useless, words are better, word in a memorable/relatable context do 95% of the work.

4

You’ll be okay, with enough practice and enough reading which reading will become second nature. Actually, you won’t even think about it and you will just know it. It will feel right.

5

Very generally for vocab, if a kanji is used alone it is usually the kunyomi, if it is with hiragana/katakana it is usually kunyomi, and if it is with other kanji it is usually onyomi. Sometimes they teach the onyomi or kunyomi first with the kanji, depending on what they think is more helpful to learn first. Of course, there’s also often lots of different onyomi and kunyomi readings and tons of exceptions. Plenty of times you’d think it would be onyomi but it’s kunyomi, or vise versa, or it’s a different onyomi, or it’s actually neither, etc. But when this happens, WK is usually pretty good at letting you know the reading is an exception or something funky is going on.

I find it easier for me to think of it as “this should be onyomi here” or “this should be kunyomi here” or “I remember this being an exception” then trying to brute force memorize the readings at random. Even though it’s by no means perfect, I find it very helpful at least as a starting point. I’d recommend focusing on what it is they’re teaching you (onyomi vs kunyomi) rather than just thinking of it as “reading 1” and “reading 2.” Best of luck to you

6

The “choice readings” that WK are most often the on’yomi which it will use in compounds. When it then presents you with a word that uses the kun’yomi, I recommend you do not think of it as memorizing the new reading of the word, but memorizing the word. The vast majority of these words that use the kun’yomi, especially early on, are very important words to know. File it away in your mind in a place separate to the more puzzle-piecey on-yomi reading.

7

ah… honestly i havent been paying that much attention to which ones are which, so far! from beginners perspective it seems like just an extra nugget of info to internalise for an unclear amount of gain. is it truly helpful to think of the readings in terms of on vs. kun?

during vocab reviews i think i usually just fish in the auditory memory for the voice acted pronunciation. some combination of “hearing” the word in my head again and/or recalling the mnemonic - actually, usually just the specific word from the mnemonic that hints the reading instead of the whole story - which prompts knowing how to read the word without explicitly thinking about which readings to use

8

That’s ok! Your percentage is certainly not bad. But I do think it helps greatly to think of the readings as onyomi or kunyomi at first so that you can apply those readings to vocab you see. Here is an example:

When the kanji for year (年) is first taught, they teach you the onyomi reading ねん which has a mnemonic to go with it. When the vocab for 年 is taught in the same level, they then teach the kunyomi とし with the explanation of:

“Since this word is made up of a single kanji, it should use the kun’yomi reading. When learning the kanji, you didn’t learn that reading, so here’s a mnemonic to help you with this word.”

Now, when you see the kanji 年 with other kanji in vocab, you know it is most likely going to use the onyomi ねん, instead of the kunyomi とし, because this is the general rule for vocab that are multiple kanji. All of these vocab use the kanji 年 with the reading of ねん:

新年: (New Year) (しんねん)
年次: (Annual) (ねんじ)
年中 (Year Round) (ねんじゅう)
〜年来 (For Some Years) (ねんらい)
年末 (Year End) (ねんまつ)
去年 (Last Year) (きょねん)
光年 (Light-year) (こうねん)
何年 (What Year) (なんねん)

And the list goes on. You can assume that most of the time, it will use the onyomi ねん if you see the kanji 年 with other kanji. But here’s the thing, on not a single one of those vocab words do they give you any mnemonic. They just tell you the standard:

“This is a jukugo word, which usually means on’yomi readings from the kanji. If you know the readings of your kanji you’ll know how to read this as well.”

And they’re right, so long as you know the onyomi readings for the 2 kanji, you can already read all of those vocab words no problem. This saves you the time and brain space of trying to remember a mnemonic or even the sound of how it is pronounced. Thinking back to a mnemonic (or just the specific word from the mnemonic) or how a vocab is pronounced are both great methods of recall in general. But, if you can read the vocab based on knowledge you already have, since you already know the onyomi of the 2 kanji individually, then no recall is necessary at all. But this only works if you specifically know that ねん is the onyomi, otherwise it feels like a guess every time between ねん or とし.

Lastly, when you do see one of the exceptions, for example 毎年 (Every Year) uses the kunyomi とし for 年, then you can think “oh yeah, this is one of those weird readings that uses kunyomi for 年.” And WK will tell you this is the case and help you too, the description for that vocab is:

“The reading for 毎 is what you’d expect. The reading for 年 is the kun’yomi reading, though. So, use your knowledge of the vocab 年 to help yourself to remember the reading for this word. You’ll need to remember that the reading for this word is strange to get it into that brain of yours.”

TLDR: The general rules for when onyomi vs kunyomi is used apply most of the time and when they don’t, now you only need to occasionally remember an exception to the rule instead of it feeling like a guess each time.

9

i see… thank you for the thorough explanation, we’ll give it a shot moving forward ^-^

10

You’re not alone! I’m so glad you posted this because I feel the exact same way and I’m wondering how I will even make it to lvl 10 let alone lvl 60 :face_with_spiral_eyes:

I’m still determined to keep with it though, and trust that the SRS will do it’s thing. I’ve also noticed that if I encounter a vocabulary word outside of WK (ie youtube, graded readers, etc), I’m MUCH more likely to remember that particular reading compared to only getting exposure to the word on WK. The problem now is just finding enough time to immerse so that I am exposed to the vocabulary I’ve recently learned.

11

Oh I don’t know, there’s a metric ton of exceptions. And of course, rendaku.

12

True, and those are the big challenge for me though not impossible. Some of my leaches might be the rendaku ones or entirely original readings.

13

You don’t need to actively try to memorize whether a reading is on or kun, but I do think it helps to know that the two categories exist, and that generally verbs and “word is one kanji” nouns are kunyomi, while two kanji compounds are mostly onyomi. Then you have a framework that makes it a bit easier to see the patterns in how the words are read. Mostly this is just useful for making better guesses when you don’t quite remember the word and for making it easier to start learning new words, though, in my view.