We need an Option to change all Onyomi readings to Katakana

I feel doing this will completely eliminate the confusion of whether a reading is on or kun because once all Onyomi are written in Katakana , it will subconsciously register in our minds and make any confusion near impossible . I guess this isnt a thing already due to the fact that some people may not know Katakana so having it as a toggleable option would be fine. I feel this will be worth the effort of implementation

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With the nature of kanji and readings… I suspect this may be wishful thinking :wink:

To take a step back could you explain what the current issue is?

Im talking about the confusion whether a reading is on or kun. Im not saying it will make learning the readings themselves easier.
The issue right now is that we need to put in extra conscious effort to remember if a reading is on or kun which can be avoided

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That would be a nice option to have.

I assume WK doesn’t do this because it would be confusing to new learners and negatively impact their sales funnel, but I agree that this should at least be an option that can be enabled for more experienced students. I would definitely enable it.

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I agree. This is why I feel it should be toggleable

I agree it would make the entry barrier a bit too high for many beginners but it would be a nice to have it as an option for intermediete users.

Do we though? I didn’t spend any mental energy on this and it worked out just fine for me.

For the most part when you are given a standalone kanji reading in WK it will be the on reading. Not always, but probably the vast majority of the time. Even then I never spent any time trying to remember the delineation and I think it’s probably counterproductive to spend much time thinking about it.

Before long you’ll start to recognize that the on readings fall into a predictable bin… ちょう、とう、さん、てつ、しつ、か、せい etc. There’s a limited amount of them that get recycled over and over.

The kun readings then wind up being recognizable as stuff that’s just totally outside of that typical bin… ひがし、はがね、かたな、ひと、いぬ、きた、etc.

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There is an option for this! It’s called the Katakana Madness Script:

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I’m not sure why people think it’s important to know whether a reading is on’yomi or kun’yomi. I never really cared. I can generally tell if a reading is one or the other, but the knowledge doesn’t really do anything to help me with learning kanji or vocabulary. It’s more a result of me learning vocabulary than an aid to learn it.

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Because it is important.

On readings are used in compounds. Kun readings are used everywhere else (for the most part). It increases your reading fluency to know and use this information, especially when faced with compounds or inflected forms you haven’t learned yet.

Agreed - I noticed long ago that ON readings are typically one syllable. Studying even a little Chinese will quickly key you in to why.

I know that on’yomi readings are generally used in kanji compounds, but since I’m learning all the vocabulary one by one anyway, this is a pattern I picked up by merely absorbing the vocabulary on WaniKani without even needing the labels “on’yomi” and “kun’yomi.”

I never went through any conscious effort to memorize which reading is which, it would be an unnecessary struggle for my mind to memorize when it can be picked up by the pattern finding part of the mind instead. I don’t think it’s worth trying to remember whether a reading is on’yomi or kun’yomi before having learned a lot of vocabulary.

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That’s fair. I just think it makes memorizing vocabulary easier. I forget the readings of compounds a lot, but and able to predict them using the On readings.

Seeing on readings in katakana is just a convention that I’m used to, so it would be nice to see. I found it a little jarring at first when I noticed that WK puts everything but loanwords in hiragana.

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I think they should add the option but for a completely different reason: so users can practice reading katakana. :wink:

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