WK is harsh on vocab for your own good 
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 
To clarify:
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.
ぎゅう for the Kanji review (pink background) and when it’s in a compound word like 牛乳. うし for the vocab review (purple background).
Don’t worry though. Eventually it’ll get easier to tell.
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.
Yes. Neither is “nichi” a complete word. That is the point.
This is not comparable to the “cow”/“beef” situation, because at the very least, those are both words.
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)
ii i recall correctly, “we’re looking for the on’yomi” is only shown when asking for kanji reading not vocab reading…
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.
this! i have exactly same sentiments as you
maybe wk can check our input if we entered an onyomi or kunyomi and and give us a little shake if what we entered was on or kun…
reading his comment a second time… i get it now 
makes sense the shake is only for the kanji reading since we need to know both onyomi and kunyomi
There is an option, but you MUST be honest with yourself when you use it.
There is a user script, [Userscript] Wanikani Override ("ignore answer button") - #27 by bynars99, that allows you to mark things you miss as not incorrect so you can try again. If you legitimately know both readings, then use this to keep it from marking as incorrect.
But this can be seen as cheating. While cheating isn’t necesarily BAD, it is potentially bad for your learning. It’s easy to hit ESC all the time and never get anything wrong… but you don’t learn that way.
If you use that, remember you will need to install everything required for it. You can read about scripts here…
Good luck!
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