評 Meaning and Reading Explanation

Although the meaning is “evaluate,” the meaning explanation and reading explanation both use the phrase “say your peace” several times, which is incorrect English. The correct version is “say your piece.”

If it were only one occurrence, I would normally just pass it off as a typo, but it appears, incorrectly, every time (four times). I think this could be particularly problematic for non-native English speakers (and even some native English speakers, I’m sure) who might not know the difference, and then who may inadvertently learn incorrect English as a result.

Of course, the second problem is the fact that 平 means “peace” in the first place… so, in order to fix the error in the idiom, you’ll have to do away with the idiom entirely and come up with a different way to explain 評 as “evaluate.”

Some ideas:
saying your evaluation of something, which causes an uproar (of angry “Hey-yo!” protests?), so you have to keep the peace

• you have nothing to say in/about the/as an evaluation, so you hold your peace

As you can see, “keep the peace” and “hold your peace” would be correct, usable idioms.

If you’d like to adopt either of those ideas, feel free to do so. And as always, thank you for everything you do for us WKers. :purple_heart: :crab: :crocodile:

6 Likes

You should send an email hello@wanikani.com. They will correct the error.

2 Likes

Thank you, will do :+1:t4:

1 Like

Yeah… but then you wouldn’t be using 言 and 平 in the phrase. I think people are aware that WaniKani uses wordplay and stretches the bounds of English to make mnemonics sometimes.

1 Like

I have a problem with remembering this kanji!!
The way that this explanation should use ‘piece’ rather than ‘peace’ is not be very conducive to facilitate memorising this kanji.

Perhaps another way of using ‘say’ and ‘peace’ could be nice, so I’m chipping in with my two cents worth of a proposal:
“When President Koichi ‘says’ that he wants ‘peace’, he would have considered/(sic evaluated) the situation and evaluated that peace is the way forward”

1 Like

You’d want to avoid using “Koichi” in this mnemonic, because he only shows up when the reading is こう. (Also, he’s the Emperor. Not the President. :stuck_out_tongue:)

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.