イギリス人 user synonym "British" not accepted?

[AnimeCanuck]

Okay.

@Mods do you know in which way @TofuguNico is talking about? Which way the fix is going?

Thanks everyone.

[TofuguNico]

I’m afraid I don’t fully understand your question here, what do you mean by which way the fix is going?

Did my reply above not answer your original question?

[MadAsgardian]

I believe the question is whether the change will allow users to set “banned” words as synonyms, warn users when they attempt to set banned words as a synonyms, or both?

[AnimeCanuck]

Um, yes, it did not.

And @MadAsgardian would be correct. I meant is the fix going to stop users from inputting synonyms that are on the blocklist/blacklist, etc., or will it instead override such lists and allow users to add (and use) them?

(In other words, on which way of this issue is the fix falling?)

Thanks!

[Chrysus]

@Isona

“American” can behave as both:
“An American” and “An American person” both work.
But “British” is just an adjective, “Brit” (more historically Briton I think?) and “British Person” are both nouns.

So your examples (sorry not sure how to quote these correctly):
Adjective: “I met someone [who was] British the other day”
Adjective too: “I met a British person the other day”
Noun: “He’s an American”
Adjective: “He’s American”
And my example: Noun: “She’s a Brit.”

I think it’s a really neat grammatical edge case!

Except these cases are based on English and have nothing to do with Japanese, the target language.
In Japanese, you can translate 「私は日本人です」as “I am Japanese” or “I am a Japanese person.”
Therefore, it reasons that 「私はイギリス人です」 translates to both “I am British” and “I am a British person.” Since the first translation only uses “British” as an adjective just like it does for the first translation using “Japanese,” it stands to reason that “British” must be an acceptable definition.

You don’t have to take my word for it. WaniKani itself uses the definition causing contention:

Wouldn’t make sense in the slightest for WaniKani to translate the word to a definition that is not acceptable.

Besides, if WK’s accepted definitions were based on if the word is serving primarily as a noun or adjective, then the definition for アメリカ人 on WK should be “an American,” the noun, not “American,” the adjective, especially considering WK lists アメリカ人 as a noun but provides an English adjective as the primary definition. The WK definitions of アメリカ人 account for both noun and adjectival forms, while the definitions of イギリス人 only account for noun forms despite WK’s own context feature using blacklisted adjectival forms.

[AnimeCanuck]

@Mods please see Chrysus’ excellent point above, too.

[TofuguNico]

I see, so the intended goal with this fix will be to add more flexibility for both our content team and the user.

Currently when words are on our blocklist, the user will still be able to add a synonym but this synonym won’t be marked as correct when the it comes time to review the item.

A similar problem occurs when we have items on our ‘warning list’ which is the case with ‘British’ for example. If you have no synonyms for イギリス人 and type simply ‘British’, you’ll get a “greyshake” prompt asking you to clarify your answer. If, however, you have added ‘British’ to your synonyms, the answer is unfortunately marked as incorrect rather than prompting the warning.

Both of these issues will be dealt with as part of the fix we are currently working on.

@AnimeCanuck

@Mods please see Chrysus’ excellent point above, too.

I’ll bring this up with our content team.

[AnimeCanuck]

Thank you very kindly, Nico.

That, answered my question. (Though not fully, as “more flexibility” is still rather ambiguous, though, I think I understand the intent of the fix.)

[AnimeCanuck]

@TofuguNico @Mods

This issue is totally coming up for me again (so not starting a new ticket), particularly in the case of ～分 where the meaning was changed from “part” to “minute” in my 2 year absence from WK. Well, I was absent again for a little over a month, forgot the meaning change (though remembered the pronunciation change, oddly enough) and then proceeded to get it wrong - even though, as evidenced by my screenshot below, I had it as a synonym. So… does that mean this forthcoming fix hasn’t been fixed yet, or does this just need to be added to (or taken off of) some list?

Thanks!

[Sulax]

For a moment I was concerned that I have to update all of my cat synonyms

[TofuguNico]

We unfortunately haven’t got round to fixing the issue yet but should be addressing it as part of our next updates. For now you’ll simply have to remove the synonym which will reveal the “grey shake” warning we currently have on the word.

[AnimeCanuck]

If I remove the synonym, I may will probably forget to re-add it later. I’ll just keep getting the error instead, and hope that the meaning WK wants gets cemented in my memory eventually… ^^;

@TofuguNico

We unfortunately haven’t got round to fixing the issue yet

One of two things will eventually occur…

(Okay, that sass is a bit much, I’ll admit… Especially when re-reading your response, and it looks like you have this user-synonym fix planned for your next update. So, here’s hoping. )

[AuoraMorgan]

But… but that vocab version of 分 is as a suffix, and with that it means “minute”, rather than “part”.

If you go to the page for the kanji it tells you all the possible meanings and readings for that kanji, as well as showing you the vocab words at the very bottom that will unlock as you go up in levels.

Some kanji have multiple different meanings and readings, some of which are drastic differences.