Why does Wanikani accept “english person” but its not listed as a one of the meanings?
I always assumed that this is what is referred to as the “whitelist”, answers that are acceptable but not explicitly taught.
It was whitelisted after a recent discussion about the accuracy of that synonym. All items can have whitelisted (and blacklisted) meanings for a variety of reasons.
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Ok so then it should be listed as a meaning. イギリス is the katana of the word English and イギリス人literally means English Person.
イギリス does originate from a Portuguese word that means “English”, but now it means the UK as a whole, not England.
England is イングランド
English (when they use it for things like “English Room” at school) is イングリッシュ
Using イギリス人 to mean “person from England (and not a person from the rest of the UK)” is a colloquial misapplication of it, and thus it’s accepted but not directly taught.
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In Japanese, “English person” and “British person” are fairly interchangeable.
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Arguing about this is not my point. If it is accepted as an answer because that is how people use it, then it should be listed in the meanings.
I added a little more as you were posting.
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But that’s not right. Just because that’s how a word is used doesn’t make it the meaning of that word.
Example:
Wicked means evil but it’s used to mean good. That doesn’t mean in an English lesson the usage of good should be taught.
First learn what a word MEANS then learn its colloquial applications second. So here learn that イギリス人 means British person instead of English person.
I am not asking for advice on how to learn Japanese. My goals and yours can be different. When you google “wicked” it lists “excellent; wonderful”. I am just saying that it should be listed.
I’m not sure the wicked example works great, because no one can say that the meaning “good” is actually wrong or represents a usage of language that is misleading or careless.
イギリス人 on the other hand, does fall into a category of words where careful specificity is relevant.
The fact that real Japanese people will make the mistake means people shouldn’t be punished too harshly, but outright teaching it as “This word means English person” is just wrong.
I think the whitelist is the perfect solution.
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I think you’ve got it backwards. How a word is used the de facto definition. Dictionaries usually lag common usage. Sometimes by decades or more.
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Wait why is this a problem? It doesnt look like you added a synonym so it took your meaning. Its like 仏僧 being listed with a meaning of buddhist priest when it would be more correct to say buddhist monk…it still means the same thing though.
also kind of weird but my samsung keyboard wont pull up the kanji ぶっそう . i had to type in the individual kaniji
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Yeah I think that’s a better analogy.
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I think for the purpose of talking about colloquial usage of words it’s an all right example.
Especially if you consider that using wicked for good would make someone sound like they’ve stepped out of a time machine from London in the 90s.
Possibly but for language learners it’s best to have the “correct” “formal” definition in place before learning colloquialisms.
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I was not aware of that association. I just know that “wicked” with positive associations is common in Boston / Rhode Island English (having lived in those places).
e.g. “The Sox are gonna be wicked awesome this year.”
It’s not everyone in those areas who use it that way, but it’s commonplace even now. And people who live there and don’t speak that way still know of it.
Perhaps that’s wholly a different definition from what you were imagining.
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Of course you could say that. You could write whole essays on the topic. You could delve into the etymology of the word wicca, and spawn pages of text on colloquial usage of antonyms.
This is irrelevant. I am saying that all accepted answers should be listed on the web interface.
Okay, so we’re just talking about whether WaniKani should have a whitelist at all? That’s a different discussion I guess (than “should this word be whitelisted”), and I don’t think they’re that likely to change their minds on that.
It’s also used for things like the old names of radicals that got changed (having one listed name for each radical is important for helping people with the mnemonics, but you don’t want to punish people who learned the old names either.)
Then you would also need to include on the interface the many misspellings that are accepted like “brtihish perpsn”…
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Yes. I think they should display all accepted meanings. I think it is weird to be saying that, “well even the Japanese people will use it to mean English, so we’ll accept it as a secret option but we won’t show you.”