Why are kana the “temporary names” though? Maybe they were just meant to be a temporary way to write the names of the kanji you didn’t know how to write yet. That’s just a guess
however, i would argue that the etymology given on wiktionary is more useful:
Compound of 仮 (kari, “borrowing, provisional thing”, cognate with verb 借る (karu, “to borrow”), the Old Japanese form of modern 借りる (kariru)) + 名 (na, “name, character”), from the way that Chinese characters were borrowed for their phonetic values to spell out the sounds of native Japanese words.[1][2]
now, i’m not necessarily saying that mnemonic explanations need to all be thoroughly researched and accurately explained - in general, after all, the mnemonics trend toward nonsense in favor of memorability - but i do believe that when a genuine etymological explanation can reinforce an unintuitive compound’s meaning then that should be prioritized over “just a guess”
i think the point of temporary names is that those are the English words that WK has previously assigned to 仮 and 名, and this part of the flashcard must always make an effort to use precisely those words in its mnemonic story. the system is explained here:
i agree that the actual etymology is often more useful for learning a word and it’s fantastic that you went and did a little of the research yourself, but i don’t think that WK should break their system and lean for borrowing rather than temporary for 仮 and character rather than name for 名 in this flashcard.
to be honest the sense of “borrowing” felt so intuitively adjacent to “temporary”, nearly synonymous in my head, that i forgot wanikani only provides temporary as the symbol’s meaning
i guess i agree with your logic, in that case. trying to dig into the ways 仮 tends to be used, i’m not even sure i can argue for wanikani’s information to be adjusted to include the alternate interpretation in this case. i think it’s another artifact of how translating terms is often very difficult to do with 1-to-1 precision
When a meaning is the same as the reading, I honestly don’t really see the value of any mnemonic or explanation at all for meaning. I think those vocab are usually the easiest ones for meaning because you don’t need to translate it into English to know what it is. I ignore all the mnemonics for words like kana or kyoto or shinjuku. I think in general, when it comes to reading Japanese and such, you want to be “thinking in Japanese” as much as possible. When the meaning is just the reading, it makes it as easy as possible to do that and I think any English explanation adds a bit of unnecessary confusion. I think the etymological explanation of “borrowed character” makes more sense than wanikani’s fictional “temporary name,” but they’re both potentially misleading. You definitely do NOT want to think that 仮名 is temporary name, or borrowed character, or anything else. When I see 仮名, I just go straight to thinking the meaning is kana, not temporary name = kana. I think it would be best if the meaning just said “You know what kana is, it’s the same as the reading” and left it at that.
you’re sort of applying hindsight here that wouldn’t actually work for probably most of the people learning the language.
yes, if you KNOW and easily recall that 仮名 is “kana” and does not have any exceptions, special readings, etc. - AND you know (and remember) that “kana” is the umbrella term for the dual hiragana/katakana system — you’ll have an easy time reading this kanji in the wild.
but for SOME people, it would be more useful to have some “cue” that would lead them to the meaning FROM the components.
in fact, 平仮名 itself uses an exceptional reading of 平
but you also have examples like 名古屋
if you immediately understand that this is a name of a place and not a word, good for you - but many learners (at least while learning) need some hook to remind them that “古” is read as “go” here etc. the mnemonics are a way to train your brain to recall the meaning from the components, rather than immediately “identify” the entire term as a frozen set.
the “just identify the name, bro” might work for things like 東京 or 京都 but probably be less effective for more obscure places, concepts, etc. or ones that people are not used to think of in “kanji terms”. (most people think of the term “hiragana” as spelled in English since they mostly encounter it in textbooks etc. where it’s almost never presented as 平仮名)
You’re mixing together meaning and reading. I think mnemonics for reading still make sense. But mnemonics for meaning when its the same as the reading doesn’t make sense to me. In that case, so long as you know the reading, you know the meaning. If you know how to read 平仮名, then you know the meaning is hiragana too. I think a meaning mnemonic of “flat temporary name” or “flat kana” to help you then get to hiragana is not helpful and causes confusion more than anything.
But if the meaning explanation is simply telling you what the thing is, that’s different to a mnemonic. If they want to briefly explain what Nagoya is for those who don’t know, I think that makes sense. They don’t do that for kana because I’m pretty sure it is widely known that kana means both hiragana and katakana, if you’re learning Japanese. I used Tofugu’s “learn kana quiz” to learn both, I’ve frequently heard both described as Kana, but that could just be me. I agree that an explanation to tell you what the thing is still makes sense sometimes. But, that’s completely separate to having a mnemonic of some sort to help memorize the meaning of kana, which is unnecessary imo.
i would argue that these are far from mutually exclusive
part of the effectiveness of kanji is the fact that they carry both phonetic and semantic meaning
i believe the difference between “translating each symbol into english first” and “intuitively connecting the idea each symbol represents into a new compound-idea” is a subtle but useful distinction (even if, obviously, not every word uses kanji with any semantic relation to the word)
Ah, well this really is the basis of my disagreement then. I’m an established hater of trying to follow semantic meaning I think Kanji have semantic history, which can be interesting but is largely unhelpful in getting to actually knowing the meaning. Native readers don’t think about semantics, even when the logic makes sense, they still use visual recognition just like readers in English. Not to mention semantics disappear entirely in spoken language.
A native reader sees 仮名, and just thinks kana. They don’t think about radicals or kanji components or how a vocab came into being 3000 years ago. I think following the semantics can be interesting, and sometimes makes some sense, but a lot of the time it makes no sense. If the meaning is the same as the reading, it’s basically just learning history at that point.
I always figured it was just an instance of nothing being as permanent as a temporary solution. “We will just put ‘temporary name’ here for now and find a better name for our fancy new script later.” (Some Japanese scholar 1200 years ago probably).
For me at least that idea was a much better mnemonic than the real etymology, but your milage may vary.
I think Kanji have semantic history, which can be interesting but is largely unhelpful in getting to actually knowing the meaning. Native readers don’t think about semantics, even when the logic makes sense, they still use visual recognition just like readers in English. Not to mention semantics disappear entirely in spoken language.