I can’t agree with this enough. I’ve been on both sides of the table over the years and realized that teaching is a skill on its own and facility in whatever subject matter doesn’t equate to facility in teaching the subject matter.
That’s why good teachers are so rare.
Huge Sir Pterry fan. 
All 3 volumes of Science of the Discworld are great reads and the concept of “lies to children” is a powerful one. Many of our most advanced theories may become lies to children in time.
My money’s on the full KO in the last 10 seconds of round 1.
Oh boy, I didn’t know that OP is married to Floyd Mayweather Jr.
You have officially just made my month. I just dusted off the first from my bookshelf for a re-read. I had no idea there was more.
So many of my favorite authors had the temerity to up and die on me after I’d read all of their works. Discovering that there is more in this series makes me happier than is seemly.
Wait! Wikipedia references volume IV. Hooray!
To be fair, a native language speaker can’t entirely grasp the difficulty of their own language. So much is inherent in growing up with a language and that just can’t be taught. Wanikani does their best to make kanji acquisition easy for learners (especially at early levels), and sometimes that means editing word association to better suit language learner needs ^^;
I wonder what is up with the “Japanese spouse” meme, but it looks like the situation is very real 
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Then again, the advice someone’s husband gave on the がつ vs げつ distinction was surprisingly solid so I think their opinion is worthwhile, because what we don’t have here often is a native speaker perspective. 
The distinction here is that you’re talking about advice on actual Japanese usage, while OP is talking about advice on WaniKani’s teaching methods. A native-speaking spouse is much more useful for the former than the latter. 
I’m very new here (obviously) so I’m not familiar with that meme, but I think it’s fair to assume that one reason someone would want to learn a new language is that they’re married to someone who speaks that language.
I didn’t mean it in a negative way . It’s just that anecdotally Japanese spouses seem to have strong negative opinions about WaniKani.
Got it…thanks for clarifying.
Probably a good call.
You could always get a kanji tattoo to show your love and knowledge of Japanese culture. 
I’m Chinese and I share the same view with the native Japanese speakers. Radicals were taught to us to carry meaning, rather than just a combination of strokes put together. So some of the ones Wanikani teaches are true radicals, other times it’s just a grouping of strokes (I wouldn’t call them radicals, but I also don’t have a better name). Once I understood that, I was less shocked by what they were teaching us. I do enjoy learning their names though, it’s hilarious.
I’ve mentioned a few things to my Japanese teacher (Japanese native, in Japan, working for a Japanese language school). I stopped doing that. It didn’t go over well. First of all, the native Japanese (as far as I know), seem determined that they way they learned as children should be forced on adults. As a former adult educator, that is completely wrong. Adult education is not the same. In fact, these same educators >know this< on some level.
An English speaking (from an English speaking country who works for same company in Japan), told me that the Japanese natives at the company, didn’t always “get it”. And that I could email him directly, if I wanted additional learning tools (that my teachers might shun?).
Last. I would like to say: With my limited poll of adults who learned Kanji, in Japan at a Japanese school - They hated it. It was forced on them, and they did not like it at all. In fact, I think the real reason they want us to learn it the same way is, they are sadistic. If they suffered, so should we. How dare we get out of the torture they went through?!
(I find making notes in my wanikani, is a great way to keep track of deepening understanding of Kanji - which has almost infinite depths due to history.)
Aye, that’s exactly WaniKani’s take on things. Basically, Japanese kids learn easy meanings first, regardless of how complicated the kanji is, because kids don’t really have the exposure to understand complicated meanings. WaniKani, focusing on literate English speakers learning Japanese, teaches easy kanji first, regardless of how complicated the meaning is, because we don’t really have the exposure to Japanese to understand complicated moon runes.
Maybe my brain is playing tricks on me but I think I remember reading (on tofugu maybe?) that WK doesn’t always use the “official” radical names but does stay consistent within itself before I actually “bought in” to the WK system. So, I’m not surprised this came up and I also don’t feel cheated.
Didn’t they say up front that they use their own system in some cases to make mnemonics easier?
I don’t remember if when I started there was a tutorial explaining the motivation for using different radical names within WaniKani, but for sure there is a Tofugu article about it.
Whether the mnemonics are that way easier is debatable. Some of the radicals like mohawk or Mona Lisa are to me way too abstract to be relatable. It’s like learning a Japanese word with a vague meaning out of context. Also, some choices seem less confusing initially like using the moon radical (and not the flesh radical) to explain body parts, but the resulting mnemonic is just way too complicated to be useful. Meaning, if there are too many points in the flow of the mnemonic story and they’re all needed to get from A to B, it’s to me fairly easy to forget them.
I myself prefer the more traditional dictionary radical names (for instance, courtyard vs lifeguard), because they force me to imagine how the past might’ve looked like and that way help me remember better .
That’s true up to level 10 or maybe 20 after which I feel that the WK order becomes essentially random (since Kanji more or less remain equally complex) and, unfortunately, not at all in line with frequency.
I find it particularly jarring that you learn for example 係 on level 16 but it doesn’t actually use the radical 系, which is only taught on level 30.
Unfortunately, there are some more examples like this.
This is such a hurtful saying and so disrespectful towards teachers. Please just look at what you’re saying, you just dismissed an entire profession as incompetent.
I’m confused because your example clearly show that WK care about the frequency ? 係 has an higher frequency than 系, just because the word 関係 is much more common than any words containing 系.
Yeah those two observations aren’t directly related with each other, although my post may accidentally imply that.
It was claimed (in the post that I responded to) that WK doesn’t teach things in order of frequency but in order of “easier Kanji first, composites later”.
My counter-claim is that this is not true. Sometimes composite Kanji are taught before their components, as in my example. However, it’s also not true that Kanji are generally taught in frequency order. A rather common Kanji like 歳 is only taught in the 40s, for example.
That’s why IMHO, after ca. level 20, WK order becomes “essentially random” to me. I can’t see a clear reason for the Kanji ordering based on either frequency or complexity. Sometimes complex Kanji come before easier ones, and sometimes rare Kanji come before frequent ones.