深夜 (Late at night / Late night show at the Tokyo Olympics)

[Makimel]

深夜（しんや）is a word that I learnt 14 levels ago, but I frequently kept making the same mistake and writing ふかや so I am still an apprentice with this word. However, I don’t think I will forget it anymore since watching the late night show at the Tokyo Olympics of the same name! Love it when something finally sinks in thanks to seeing it in context

[Belthazar]

You should watch 深夜食堂, then. It’s on Netflix, under “Midnight Diner”.

[Makimel]

I have watched a couple of episode, but didn’t realise its Japanese name, just knew it as ‘Midnight Diner’, so thanks :). I am a big fan of 孤独のグルメ and ワカコ酒.

[jneapan]

I’ve posted this advice many times before, but don’t memorize vocab by associating it with the kanji and then try to answer the vocab reading by guessing the kanji readings.

What’s more, more efficient (at least for me), is strongly associating the meaning with the reading, when memorizing vocab. You commit the word しんや to memory with the meaning “late at night”, then when the quiz asks you for the reading of 深夜, you check the readings of the kanji against your memory bank.

Have an internal dialogue:
“Do I know ふかよる?” “Hmmm, no”
“What about ふかや?” “Hmmm, still no”
“What about しんよる?” “Nope”
“What about しんや?” “Oh yeah, I memorized that word, it means ‘late at night’”

Think of it from the perspective of a Japanese child. They learn thousands of words long before they learn how to read and write kanji. They memorize the pronunciation and the meaning of the words, and then they learn how to write them years later. Sometimes the kanji will be an exception (there are a lot of those), but I still think the “reading-first” approach is the best. Unfortunately, I think WK’s mnemonics and how the vocab lessons are taught go against this method, which makes it inefficient in my opinion. Just try it for a while and see if it works for you.