Why not bold “definitely” and “right”? He’s about 200% too confident even with the qualifiers you mentioned.
I’m not going to quibble over the difference between no shadow of a doubt and almost no shadow of a doubt. It’s like 100% and 99.9%. Big woop.
If everyone’s vagues guesses were 99.9% likely to be right, people wouldn’t struggle with meanings at all.
True. My point is if he previously learn 空 as “empty” as opposed to WK’s “sky” interpretation. Then it doesn’t really serve as a strong example. There are plenty of vocabulary in Japanese that blow his argument into pieces. That’s what was my intention of my comment.
@Leebo haha, you’re killing me here!
Okay, everyone can agree that vocab that destroys his argument more than 空車 can be thought of by almost anyone with little thinking. 寿司 is the easiest. 空車 is merely “good” for destroying his argument and not “great.”
I’m aware that I have a bad habit of adding thoughts to things I’ve already posted, if that’s what you mean.
How about this: just by looking at 見事 (looking at stuff?) it’s hard to figure out what it means, but reading it as みごと and you will probably remember again.
Edit: additionally the meaning of a kanji is often not related to what is depicted but rather to the Chinese reading of a phonetic component and further components that define the meaning based on the sound. The Japanese just didn’t import it as nicely as it is probably in Chinese, but it still helps a lot.
(Not always as nice as this)
I posted about how I learned Kanji in the wild here. In short, although the goal is to learn Kanji meaning, when you see the Kanji, you must recall at least 1 reading.
Also, for most/all Kun readings of every Kanji, you should always know the vocab…
In the end, you have to know both Kun and On readings.
If you insist on learning Kanji meaning alone, try RTK and www.kanjipedia.jp
You don’t need to know Kanji meaning that much, but you need to know associated vocab enough to imply the meaning of a new vocab.
お袋 and 寿司 are good examples up there, that you need to know the reading, at least 1, but more than 1 is preferred.
Because kanji make words and if you don’t know words you can’t consider yourself fluent in a language
It sounds like you don’t want to learn Japanese, you just want to learn what different kanji signify. This website (at least I hope 
) was made in order to facilitate learning Japanese. Although WK is not sufficient in and of itself for learning Japanese (you still need grammar, listening comprehension, etc…) it was basically created with the idea that the users’ primary goal is learning Japanese, and so teaching the reading with the meaning is basically a given. I don’t know what better time to introduce the reading would be than when you’re introduced to the kanji itself…?
(also many of our beloved mnemonics wouldn’t even exist if WK didn’t teach the readings !!)
why even bother testing us on kanji reading, if we’re gonna learn it at
some point anyway, and we’ll all eventually know it’s actually more
complicated than just “this is how you read this character”
There is more to that. There is this thing called rendaku that changes slightly the on’yomi reading, like this:
二百 is read にひゃく
三百 is read さんびゃく
八百 is read はっぴゃく
Knowing how each kanji is read lets you bet how a vocab is read.
There is also kanji that can have multiple meanings, but where each reading can mean a different thing.
月 can be read ゲツ, and it will mean generally ‘Moon’ or ‘Monday’
月 can be read ガツ, and it will mean generally ‘month’ (as a counter for month)
Those are both on’yomi. Another famous example is 人 that has both にん and じん as on’yomi readings, with slight meaning difference (I remember reading about it in some thread here, but I can’t seem to find which one…).
Finally, the most important point in my opinion, is that your predicate is false. As you’ll continue learning kanji and vocabulary, you’ll notice how similar two kanji can be. By learning kanji, you also learn how to tell them apart. 微 and 徴 look pretty similar, and you might not differentiate them well if you don’t know what radical changes.
I know this has been well-responded-to, but one of the big reasons to learn the common readings is not only that it helps you sound out (or take an educated guess at sounding out) words you’ve never seen before, but in this wonderful age of online dictionaries and jisho applications, it can help you look up the meaning of new words too.
I currently work in a Japanese school, and any time I see an unknown word in a document, if I know the kanji in it, I start by typing how I think it’s probably read into a dictionary. This frequently nets me new words, vocabulary, and a general understanding of my surroundings that would be much more difficult if I didn’t know the most common pronunciations.
Of course the readings aren’t perfect rules, and of course the language is rife with exceptions. That doesn’t mean knowing the most common readings isn’t an extremely useful starting point for navigating text as a learner.
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