This is my first post here. I came across the first thing that got me a bit confused. I’m learning the vocabulary for 下手 (Unskillful) and it’s read as へた. (Level 2).
Now what I can notice is that if I go to the individual pages for 下 and 手 I can’t find the ON/KUN reading at all.
I was just wondering if this is something that may happen in WaniKani, that for some vocab words I will not learn the reading or will not be able to find it on Wanikani. Or perhaps for vocab I shouldn’t learn the reading separately (each kanji) but consider this word as one reading itself?
Everyonce in a while there will be vocab words that dont fit with any onyomi or kunyomi readings. 下手 just happens to be one of those weird words! In that case, just go by the reading explanation.
This is correct - 下手’s an exception! The へた reading isn’t really へ + た as a compound and you won’t see those kanji read like that in other words. It’s only this word that’s read like that.
You can sort of see on Jisho too by how the furigana are placed sort of awkwardly above the word instead of the individual components:
Yes, that. Oftentimes you can derive a vocab‘s reading from the readings of its parts, but it’s always an individual thing. Sometimes, there are some quirks to it. And for some words you can’t derive anything, like the others said.
