他所 reading suddenly changed

[yk7]

@WeebPotato

Right, but is this about context sentences in general or about the ones in WaniKani specifically? I understand the context sentences in WaniKani are supposed to be funny to make learning a more entertaining process (which is a good idea in general I think), but they often (I guess anecdotally…) end up being so abstract that they provide poor context for the correct usage of the taught word. Not to mention that if the translation either uses a word not among the accepted English meanings for the vocabulary card or is so detached from the Japanese sentence you can’t possible align them, their usefulness decreases further.

I meant the context sentences in WaniKani specifically. But since I basically never read them, I can only speculate what their intention was.

Actually, I think WaniKani is too funny and entertaining. I’d prefer it to be more… composed? Moreover I think remembering a story is overkill. I got a feeling after using WaniKani for a while that a couple of words, maybe a sentence, should be enough. At least for me. What kind of confirms my idea is the KanjiDamage website, where they give you a mnemonic. But there’s no app there and well, I don’t really like the language they use.

As for the rest, you give no examples. As such, I have to either believe you or not. But I understand that you might not want to spend time on this.

@WeebPotato

They end up being a catch 22 situation - if you can understand the context sentence in Japanese, you need neither the translation nor the vocabulary you’re trying to memorize.

I think that translation might help even if it’s not perfect, which never is. I’m not sure I’m at the point where I can always understand what a sentence means with a dictionary alone (without a translation).

@dlombard

Except, in this case, たしょ is not strictly an incorrect reading (that would have been even more egregious). It is now considered the no-longer-preferred reading.

From what I can see you don’t want to memorize たしょ even it’s sometimes used. At least that shouldn’t be you preferred reading.

@dlombard

But yes, I would never recommend or characterize WK as a tool for learning the Japanese language in a way that renders learning with a teacher and textbook unnecessary. That is very far from being the case.

I believe they said it themselves somewhere. At the very least you can see what information they provide to Google:

To add to the point, I don’t think that if they made you learn all the used meanings, the contexts where the words are used, all that needs to be learned to use a word, that’ll be a good thing. Ideally you want to learn every day for short periods of time. For that you need to give a quick answer and a quick way to figure out if you were correct. Which means simplification, which makes it incorrect to some degree. Whether they were able to find the right balance… Apparently it’s not perfect. But is not bad either.

P.S. The main reason I joined the conversation was, say, exaggerated claims like “at no point in the past had WaniKani ever taught the vocabulary reading of 他所 as よそ.” You don’t want to blame a website too eagerly. To err is human. If a website gets hacked, do you prefer it to notify you about the case or not? On the other hand, I also have a feeling that there’s room for improvement. Actually I think the method itself (SRS) is not really good. These days I use the Self-Study Quiz userscript. Or my fork of it, to be precise. Because it’s not perfect either Anyway, where was I… room for improvement, and I can believe there are long-standing issues. But if not WaniKani, then what?