I hope you are well today. I have read through similar posts but cannot understand this distinction from the answers.
Why does WaniKani have a category for Kanji and Vocabulary?
I understand there is a difference between On and Kun readings, what is confusing to me is the category âVocabularyâ.
What makes a Kanji a Vocab word and what makes it a Kanji by WaniKaniâs definition? Is this just a grouping used by WaniKani to help with learning? Or are there Vocabulary words and Kanji words in the Japanese language, clearly defined as such?
Apologies if the question is not clear, I am a little confused. Please let me know if I can clarify.
Only the vocabulary items are words you would encounter in real sentences.
Kanji items are more like a broad concept for that particular character. They often can have many readings and many meanings. WaniKani typically only teaches and asks for one of each to keep things from being overwhelming, but theyâre all acceptable most of the time.
Words usually have just one reading, though there are exceptions.
When you read a sentence, youâre seeing words, but the words can be made up of 1 or more kanji. So, it can be confusing why there is a æ°Ž kanji item and a æ°Ž vocab item, but itâs kind of like how âaâ or âIâ (thatâs a capital i) can be words in English with very specific meanings, even though they are also letters that can make up other words too.
The other two explanations are good, but allow me to also give my own comparison because I think it might be clearer than letters that donât really have âmeaningâ on their own.
I think the best comparison are English parts of words that reappear in many words. Think âbio.â Not really a word on its own (barring abbreviated uses), but words with it tend to mean something related to life. Biology, biometrics, biography, etc. Thatâs what kanji is like, while vocab are, of course, those words. Sometimes a single kanji is a word in itself, but of course is still a kanji which probably has uses in combination with other kanji, so they double up on teaching them as both (often with different readings)
The best thing about learning the kanji themselves, and not just memorizing words made up of kanji, is that once you internalize the kanji, you arenât constrained to just the words you learn directly in Wanikani. This is invaluable when you apply what youâre learning by reading (or listening, but especially reading) Japanese content. Iâm halfway through the journey, but just knowing the kanji Iâve done so far gives me a pretty good chance at figuring out new words I encounter. You see how things fit together, which is very satisfying. And youâll Burn vocab much more efficiently.
another way to look at it might be with (as an example) the triplet of âwaterâ, âaquaâ, and âhydroâ.
all three carry the meaning of âwaterâ. the first is the english word (with roots in germanic languages). the second and third come from latin and greek. we drink water. we keep fish and other aquatic lifeforms in aquariums. we study hydrology to learn about the water cycle, and get power from hydro-electric dams.
japanese is quite similar in that aspect, in that it has words with japanese origins (kun), and words with chinese origins (on). in english, we rarely (compared to water) use aqua and hydro as standalone words. and similarly, in japanese we rarely use the chinese reading as a standalone word.
if we used symbols (e.g. kanji) for writing english, weâd be using æ°Ž for all three of water, aqua, and hydro. and weâd distinguish between the word water (written æ°Ž) and the symbol æ°Ž.
So vocabulary are how the words appear in sentences and can either be kun or on reading, and kanji are standalone characters never used in sentences and can be kun or on reading?
If we are talking strictly about single kanji, yes, vocab words can be on or Kun in general. However, except for a few exceptions, specific words will be read with one or the other and never both. Multi character vocab words also donât have an âon or Kunâ. They are units made up of onyomi, Kunyomi, both, or neither.
Simply put: words exist. They can be made up of 0-?? Kanji characters. Words are read a certain way. This reading can be a result of the kanji that make it up.
There are already good answer but let me answer to the last question only
âOr are there Vocabulary words and Kanji words in the Japanese language, clearly defined as such?â
no, theyâre not.
Native people (including Japanese) learn to speak before writing, which is hardly surprising but itâs often not the case when you learn a foreign language.
In the language there is no concept of a âkanjiâ. Simple names can be often written with a single Kanji (fi.e. kuruma: è») but for verbs and adjective you need to put some hiragana ( arau: æŽă)
So far so good. But when people want to create new fancy words, they usually use the onyomi, since it sounds more âpoliteâ ( sensya: æŽè»), but there are tons of exceptions.
So learning both the onyomi and kunyomi of a kanji helps when reading unknown words, but only the words in the vocabolary part of WK are used by themselves.
