In the last review I had, I discovered you could type in katakana by using caps lock, and so I typed アメリカジン as the reading for アメリカ人 . I figured my answer would be accepted, and if anything, I’d get that little shake and a message telling me to type in hiragana. Instead it was marked as wrong.
What the 地獄? I know phonetic readings are almost always written in hiragana, but why did I get penalized? They’re the same sounds!!
Did you type Jin using katakana also? That’s the only other reason why I could think of it being marked wrong except for a bug.
Yeah, I did. But I don’t get why it didn’t just tell me to type out in hiragana instead of marking me wrong. WK corrects you if you type in the reading as the meaning, or if you give the kun’yomi reading when it’s asking for the on’yomi. But writing the right reading in the wrong kind of kana is wrong…
Probably because a string comparison of アメリカ and あめりか returns false and WK just hasn’t bothered to put katakana equivalents as correct answers into their database for all items that are presented using katakana.
I’d good ahead and give WK a pass on that one. It’s the kind of thing you might do once, and now you know. And I’d presume that WK doesn’t see the ability to recognize katakana entry as key to enabling their whole kanji learning mission.
Edit: I didn’t notice you typed 人 using katakana also. In my book, unless it’s a manga book and you are using katakana for emphasis, that is wrong and it’s proper that WK would mark it as wrong.
I think the error comes from ジン, since Kanji readings are always expected to be in hiragana. I am pretty sure Wanikani accepts katakana for parts of words which are in katakana.
Yeah, i always answer アメリカじん and its marked correctly. You can’t write word readings as katakana unless its a stylization with purpose, which isn’t something you’re doing in WK
I see. Well, I’ve learned my lesson! Thank you and everyone else who replied 
Usually, but not always! WaniKani recently added 頁 which expects ページ. And presumably if they ever added 珈琲 they’d expect コーヒー.
though WK does accept ぺーじ as an answer to 頁
Same reason they accept あめりかじん for アメリカ人 I guess. Just as a convenience in case the user doesn’t know how to / doesn’t want to put katakana.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.