I’ve been doing wanikani for a few days now, and i got through level one kanji and radicles very easily. but i am seriously struggling with the easiest vocab you can get. and i don’t mean the meanings but with the pronunciations. it takes me like 6 reviews to start remembering a few. does that mean that i am gonna take longer than the average person to finish this website because i want to be prepared to take wanikani for years if that is the case. arigatou!
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Hey, welcome!
Literally don’t worry about the speed you’re learning at, after all this is your personal journey! As long as you’re getting it eventually, I’d say the SRS is working 
If you ever need to ask questions about grammar or random vocab or context or just community fun, the forums are always open 
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thanks for the heads up, will do. one more thing, how much of the first ten levels do you think i will remember by the time i reach level 60?
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The first ten levels are mostly really common kanji. Assuming you read any Japanese material before you reach level 60, you should probably remember most of them.
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Are you new to Japanese? When I first started all the words sounded like a combination of random syllables - it was tough to remember anything. But that got better as I got more used to the sounds.
I agree with @BIsTheAnswer - the kanji and vocab of the first 10 levels will likely stick pretty well. It’s the stuff from the higher levels that will give more issues.
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thanks for the info.
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It actually gets quite a bit easier several levels later when you know enough Kanji for WK to start throwing a lot of compound words at you that you can already guess the readings for.
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I’m actually just completing level 2 and something that helped me was to really lean into the mnemonics more. It could be that, like me, you memorized the radicals and kanji from level 1 mostly off rote memory, but when I stare at a kanji I just can’t remember the reading to in my head, I grasp at what I remember about that kanji: the story. A good example of this would be the vocab for 上る, which means to climb. I remember the idea that I’m trying to climb something and I really imagine this gruff old man in rough clothing grabbing me by the shoulders and saying “No boy! Don’t do it!” When I remember this, I also remember the reading is のぼる.
Hope that helps a bit and happy studying, hope to see you at level 60!
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I’m taking it slower. I have trouble remembering things. The first review is pretty useless for me.
Writing down the lessons has helped me retain the new information better but it is time consuming.
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i dont know why but i died at the old man telling you not to do it. thank you for the tips on how to remember kanji and i will be remembering it for the future. i will see you at level 60 my friend!
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It honestly is gonna take a few levels to get used to it. For the first two or three levels I just had no idea how to predict it. It sounded pretty simple, but I wasn’t really sorting the different readings and when to use them in my head like I should have been. Don’t worry about it.
It’s just tough since there’s just no English equivalent. I’d suggest still trying to predict the reading during your lessons before you see it. Even if you get most wrong for a couple more levels, it’s good to get the practice, and it won’t be long before it feels natural. Eventually you can even get a feel for which ones will rendaku, when they’ll use the kun’yomi vs on’yomi, or even when there’ll be an exception. Lessons in general will get easier too. Half of learning is learning how to learn.
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Honestly for me I was also having some difficulty remembering the vocab words early on. I thought it was so much to remember but over time I got used to it and it isn’t so difficult anymore! Enjoy the 40 vocab words you have in the first lvl, because pretty soon it’s gonna be over 100 every level.
That is very true. Every time I do vocab lessons I always predict the reading, mainly jukugo words, and it really does help a lot. I’m at that point where I know what sounds kun’yomi and what sounds on’yomi, and I can generally get a feel when something is going to get rendaku’d. Oh boy how far I’ve come and how much I still have left!
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I wouldn’t worry too much about your speed on the first few levels. It’s a pretty foreign concept for most beginners and it takes a bit to find your stride and get used to how the system works.
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thanks for the reply, ill be trying that for sure from now on.
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i wont lie, that does sound kind of exciting.
ill keep it in mind.
I’m here for the forums, not the SRS (which I don’t use), so I don’t know what the ‘average’ time needed to learn a new word is, but since you’re just starting out, don’t worry about it too much. Japanese words are very different from English ones, and you may not have any idea how to remember what each one means or sounds like at first. As someone else has suggested, you may want to try focusing more heavily on the mnemonics provided for now to see if they help you. If, ultimately, the mnemonics confuse you or don’t stick, you may want to come up with your own. If it comes to that, I suggest you try to find ways to link the reading of a word to its meaning, since you seem to have no trouble with remembering meanings. If you’re looking for ideas, you can try the threads on mnemonics on the forums, like this one – shameless plug 
– that I started yesterday. Most of the words there now are fairly advanced, but I’ll create a few examples of mnemonics combining meaning and reading (and sometimes kanji) for beginner vocabulary. If you want, you can also post some of the words you find difficult to remember. Maybe someone else will have an idea. 
(By the way, some words are really common ‘in the wild’, so even if they’re hard right now, if you read a little or watch some anime/dramas/Japanese TV, they should start to stick because you’ll hear them a lot.)
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haha thank you for the website, ill be checking it out. ive been using tips from other people and have been using patterns in the vocab to help myself and now am finding myself learning them much faster, and ill be trying to learn the really common ones better by reading them in anime and such.
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Use mnemonics till the point where you will automatically not need them. There will be a point where you will just look at the vocab and without thinking about any story, you will be just able to read it as if it was written in hiragana or roumaji. Don’t fret, it will happen automatically
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