Vocab is killing me. is that normal?

[Kurafutekkusu]

Just to add on to this, what someone said earlier:

Unlike English kanji have associated ideas that Wanikani calls readings

If we’re simplifying the concept of kanji to be like English letters, then I still like to see English letters as having ‘readings’.

In the above sentence ‘e’ can be read as:

‘eee’ → ‘we’, ‘be’, ‘English’

‘eh’ → ‘letters’, ‘then’

And the way I usually simplify the whole concept is:

Radical → Standalone ‘drawing’, doesn’t mean anything but is given a name to help you remember.

Kanji → A ‘letter’, made up of 1 or more drawings (radicals). WaniKani typically teaches the most common/useful reading for this. But, all of the readings are still valid for that kanji, even the ones WaniKani doesn’t accept in the answer. The reason WaniKani does this is to expose you to more ways to read the kanji, and you can then learn which reading to use with each word.

Vocab → A ‘word’, made up of 1 or more letters (kanji). Uses one of the readings per each letter.

Drawings make up letters which make up words.

Let’s imagine English is being taught as Japanese.

You might start with something like this:

(apologies for my awful drawing of a cane lol)

And let’s say the reading you’re taught for this is ah, because let’s hypothetically say it’s the more common reading.

And then, you’re taught the vocabulary word:

And what do you know, the dictionary word ‘a’ has the reading ey which is what you’re taught.

So, the letter (kanji) has readings ah and ey, but you’re specifically taught to answer ah, even though any of the readings would still be correct for this letter.

The vocab word that only has this one ‘kanji’ uses the reading you weren’t taught with the letter - ey.

Then, you may be taught another vocab comprising of three ‘kanji’ - a, r, and e - are. Here, you still see the ah reading of the ‘kanji’.

To summarise:

circle → drawing (radical)

cane → drawing (radical)

a → letter (kanji) made up of 2 drawings (radicals). Has readings ah and ey but you’re taught to answer ah for the kanji.

a → a vocab word made up of 1 letter (kanji). The word uses the ey reading.

are → a vocab word made up of 3 letters (kanji). Here, the letter (kanji) uses the ah reading.

Relate It Back To Japanese

Japanese is, of course, a bit more complicated because kanji have associated meanings, but I think this simplification still helps understand how each of the 3 things relates to each other and why WaniKani teaches it a certain way.

水 → a drawing (radical).

水 → a letter (kanji) made up of 1 drawing (radical). Has readings すい and みず but you’re taught to answer すい for the kanji.

水 → a vocab word made up of 1 letter (kanji). The word uses the みず reading.

水中 → a vocab word made up of 2 letters (kanji). Here, the letter (kanji) uses the すい reading.

This is how my brain works, hope this helps someone

[aPaincake]

Although similar, 上 and 下 are different kanji. But, some of the earlier readings are still tripping me up 10 levels later. 上 has 6 readings which is a lot. Later kanji mostly have 2-3 readings which makes it easier, or they have more rarely used readings.

Something that helped me was reading the mnemonics out loud, or sometimes creating my own mnemonics from the radicals. I only started doing the latter recently however.

[Ali-Star]

Helps me! Thanks

[Ali-Star]

That does make sense.

Its a good way of thinking about it, thanks

[KingKanjiTheMighty]

This is how I like to look at it.

For English, 水 could be read as:

Kun’yomi: “Water”

On’yomi: “Hydro”, “Aqua”

That’s the kanji itself. It means “water” and has three readings. The on’yomi readings are used as part of compounds from Latin (“Hydrology”, “Aquarium”, etc), whereas the kun’yomi reading is used as a vocabulary word (“Water”). Some compounds also use the kun’yomi reading, like “Waterproof”.

English doesn’t use Kanji, so we don’t necessarily make the explicit connection that Japanese does between all these readings. That said, if someone says “Aquamusical” (a made up word), you would instantly guess it had something to do with water, because you know “Aqua” means water, even though you can’t order a glass of “Aqua” at a restaurant.

English and Japanese are similar in that they’re both originally island languages, with a huge number of words and a writing system brought from the continent. For Japanese that’s Chinese and kanji, for English that’s Greek, Latin and French and roman letters. So for Japanese you have to learn “kokoro” and “shin” for heart, and in English you have to learn “heart” and “cardio” for heart. Native speakers learn the on’yomi readings from compound words rather than dictionary memorization: we learn that a cardiologist is a doctor that specializes in the heart, that pyromaniacs are people who set fire to things, that aquariums have huge tanks of water, etc. But we don’t say “I want a glass of aqua and would like to warm myself beside the pyro”, because aqua and pyro aren’t words, they’re components of compound words from a continental language; they carry meaning but cannot be written as standalone words.