I mean, the reason why some of my vocab still stuck at guru is because wanikani punish real hard when reviewing vocab. Take for example 日, i know its “day”, and i know its either にち or ひ. But when you are reviewing kanji, you get free pass if you input ひ, not so much when its vocab. Even worst when my brain already wired out that as にち since ive been using it for counting days.
Vocab with 2 or more letters is no issue because you can easily distinguish, but not so much when it come to single vocab that read differently to kanji.
The problem is that にち is incorrect. When you see 日 as a word when reading, the only correct reading is ひ. This is not a problem with WaniKani, it is just how the Japanese language works. Kanji can have many readings, but words only have one most of the time.
For example if English had kanji and you read the sentence “Please give me some 水” as “Please give me some hydro” people will be confused because hydro alone is not a word. (but 水electricity = hydroelectricity is a word)
Same in Japanese, if you want to say a “winter day” but say 冬のにち people will be confused because にち alone is not a word.
I always have the same problem! Recently even more so like with 年 it’s とし as vocab and I always get this one wrong!
I’m starting to think that a good solution might be to simply remember the vocab as the “main” reading. So whenever you see that kanji type the vocab reading, if it’s the kanji one it will just tell you to put in another reading.
A similar issue I realised is with the radicals. I recently got the 日 radical wrong, because I typed in “day” but it is “sun” … It would be great if WK could be more relient here too
When you see the kanji 日 and input “hi”, that is not wrong. It is entirely correct. Wanikani just tells you that “we’re looking for the on’yomi” because Wanikani wants and needs you to know both readings.
When you see the word 日 and type in “nichi” or “jitsu”, that is just flat-out wrong, as others have stated before.
When it comes to radicals, you can add a user synonym so it would accept ‘day’ as well. If you’re reliant on the mnemonics a lot, though, it would be good to remember that it’s ‘sun’. That way you can recall the mnemonic for the meaning or reading better later on.
Thanks for all the warm reply, i guess i just have to drill real hard on it so i can remember, i always have problem with this type of memorization. Especially when you already have some background in Japanese language due to consuming anime/VN. Cow for example, its like shooting while blindfolded, should i go with Gyuu or Ushi, cant really tell because both are cow.
The mnemonic are hit or miss for me, if its word that i didnt know, then it help tremendeously, but if its a word that i heard a lot from anime, its easy to get confused.
You’ve found one of the few examples where both of those are actually real words. But jisho only lists “gyuu” under “Other forms” so, while it seems to exist, it’s by far the less common form.
But in other cases (e. g. the word 日) it’s pretty clear-cut, ひ is the only correct reading and you will not encounter anything else in the wild.
ぎゅう is the on’yomi reading (typically wanikani requires the on’yomi reading for the kanji and it’s mostly used in compound words consisting of multiple kanji), while うし is the kun’yomi reading (most of the time this will be the reading for a standalone kanji as a vocab item). At the start it may be confusing which is which, but at some point you’ll start recognizing them by feel. A lot of readings like こう, きゅう, しん, か, etc. appear commonly as on’yomi readings and you’ll get used to it with time. Kun’yomi readings can be a lot more varied.
As a beginner, the whole onyomi and kunyomi is like another layer of complexity that really add up another headache lol.
I was probably hoping if i input ぎゅう instead of うし while reviewing the vocab, wanikani will at least give small shake and say “its the other one”, or other message so we get another try.
“Kanji” get those lenient feature if you input vocab reading, “Meaning” get small pass when you misspell your word, but “Vocab” is like…nope, back to master/guru.
If an English learner were trying to learn the word “cow” with an app, do you think you would do him or her a favor by just doing a shake and a warning if they input “to” instead of “cow”, just because there are words like torero or taurus ?
That seems a bit too far fetch tho, i mean bullfight and constellation star, and “to” is not even complete word in that context.
But i would say if they try to learn the word “cow”, and they input “beef” or “cattle”, they probably deserve 2nd chance (in the context of cow that is). But English is not that vague compare to Japanese, most English word with multiple meanings tend to only have like 2-4 different meaning at best, unlike Chinese and Japanese.
Exactly ! ぎゅう is not a word either.
If there were kanji in english, we would maybe write “cow” as 牛 and torero as “牛戦” (because etymologically it’s bull-fight) and taurus as 牛星 (bull-star) perhaps. “to” would be a valid reading of the kanji 牛 (pink background) but wouldn’t make sense for the word cow (purple background)
That’s what he’s saying. Both ひ and にち are valid readings for the kanji 日, so WaniKani doesn’t punish you for typing in a different reading than it wanted. For the vocab 日 the only valid reading is ひ, and that’s why you get marked wrong if you input にち and not asked for another reading.
and I always get this one wrong!
makes sense the shake is only for the kanji reading since we need to know both onyomi and kunyomi