in general i really don’t get vocab vs kanji
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A kanji is a chinese letter. A vocab is a word written with kanji. For comparison in English a is a letter. There are words written with this letter. For example there is the indefinite article a which is a single letter a. Hopefully you wouldn’t confuse the letter a with the word a. The same distinction should be made with kanji.
Unlike English kanji have associated ideas that Wanikani calls readings. They may or may not be related to the words written with the kanji. Perhaps this is what is throwing you off.
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this is kind of helping me, thank you’
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back: honestly i think what’s really getting me is that “letters” have meanings
if i’m not misremembering, then sometimes the way a letter is said is also different from the meaning of the vocab word even if they do mean the same thing, right?
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Think of kanji as the equivalent of what specific suffixes or prefixes do in English.
In English, you have the word “water”. You know what it means.
You also have the prefix “hydro”, that is used in words like hydrogen, hydrophobic, hydrolysis, hydrological. When you see hydro- before a word, you immediately know it has something to do with water.
But we also have composite words that don’t use “hydro” but directly “water”.
Waterproof. Waterway. Watermelon.
Japanese simply uses the same symbol for both.
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another helpful response, thank you!
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Well said. I might add that simply due to the fact that WK has ~2100 kanjis and ~6600 vocabs, it should be normal to feel overwhelmed by vocabs when they’re two-thirds of the whole curriculum.
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Yes kanji have multiple readings. Wanikani teaches you the most frequent reading with the kanji leaving the secondary readings to some vocabulary, This is why you often see a discrepancy between the base kanji reading and its use in vocabulary.
This will help understand why there are multiple readings for the same kanji.
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Kanji are more like word roots (e.g. water, hydro) or perhaps series of syllables than letters. They are also more like pictures than letters.
In English, you have the word 
. You know what it means.
You also have the prefix , that is used in words like 
and 
.
In addition, words with Chinese origins do have reading, in addition to meaning, inherited from China. Except that, different regions and eras of China may have different Kanji readings.
Some words don’t have Chinese origins though, and just get replaced with pictograms for meaning. (Or partially replaced like those with Okurigana. ry)
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Adding onto this because people get tripped up with letters having meanings, a is the same as well. a can have the meaning of “not”
Atypical
Atheist
Asocial
Apathetic
That doesn’t mean “a” is a word that means “not” though.
Similarly i can be a first person pronoun or when used as a letter it can have the meaning of “apple product” lol.
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This was a really helpful addition!
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Kanji combinations with on’yomi are similar to the English (and other European language) words that derive from Greek or Roman roots. Consider the word “telephone”, which is “far-sound” (tele = far, phone = sound). The Japanese equivalent is 電話, i.e. “electric conversation”.
I’ve been told that if you know the root meaning of lots of kanji, you can sometimes figure out the meaning of heretofore unknown (to you) compound words.
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This website is really interesting and make me easy to understand the kanji. In my opinion if you keep studying that will help you out to memorize the voac . That is way better than formal studying style.
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In worst cases, I don’t see Kanji as a letter, but rather a series of sounds. For more common sounds like an or in, I would say that they have meanings, but unreliable to tell exactly. The rarer the sound combination, the stronger meaning it may have.
Kanji can have exceptional readings, though, that is, not following Kanji sounds, and sometimes even extend across multiple Kanji. In this case, Kanji is indeed more like a letter.
For the case of Kanji partial substitution, it’s a big thing for a irregular Okurigana, like natives don’t follow Kanji readings used in a dictionary, or several almost similar readings are listed in a dictionary.
Anyway, Kanji should be seen to have meanings in words with similar pronunciation, but different Kanji. It’s not only about sound here, but telling the story several words with the same Kanji.
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Tbh, I’m having the same issue.
Mine is understanding the difference between pronunciations of the same kanji in multiple words:
上 for example gives me trouble, its used in to raise, to lower, to hang and on its own depending on what its with. All of them seem to pronounce it differently as vocabulary but have the same kanji. I was trying to think of an English comparison but the best I came up with were homophones but its literally the opposite! 
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Aren’t you mixing 上 and 下 ?
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Yea, bad example perhaps I’m a bit more familiar now but still a tad confusing…
There is:
下げる to hang i think
上げる to raise
上 has a different pronunciation when in 上げる and also one on its own, which was じょうif I recall but also has うえ for some reason hence my confusion.
下 also has a seperate pronunciation した.
There was also to lower but I have forgotten that one. I think it had 下 in it anyway!
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I’ve always viewed it more as emoji text.
hell hound, hotdog, Dalmatian
green tea
It’s kind of hard to generate more examples because emoji all have well defined meanings alone.
anchovy pizza?,
pineapple pizza
I’m sure others can generate better examples. Not me though apparently.
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Do you know the words WATERproof, HYDROgen, AQUEduct ?
If English language used kanji, the part in uppercase will be written 水 in those three words.
Different pronunciations, yet the same kanji/idea/concept.
It’s the same in japanese, the words 上、上げる and 上手 have different pronunciations (うえ、あげる、じょうず),
上 in them always have the same idea of “up”, to raise,…
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I heard somewhere that the reason manga caught on so well in Japan is because Japanese were already “writing with pictures”, i.e. kanji.
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