I took a long break from WK, but continued studying Japanese outside it. And for a long time I had issues with 辺, the kanji. For some reason I had the impression that it meant ‘side’, as opposed to 近, which meant nearby. So when I saw words like 海辺 and 川辺 I just thought, hey, side. This would even lead to confusion, like “okay which one means side?” I eventually learned that’s not the case at all, and its meaning is closer to ‘vicinity’, with the mathematics usage derived from that. But I had no idea why I thought this. Then I came back to WK and discovered: oh, it’s because their vocab entry for 辺 the standalone word is unnecessarily limited.
You guys gotta accept ‘area’ as a definition, here.
I think that Kanji on its own as a vocabulary word only has the meaning of “side” which is why WK only accepts side. The only examples they give for the vocab are it being used as “side.” But there’s a big difference between how a kanji is used alone (its stand-alone vocab meaning) and what that kanji means when it is used in combination with other kanji or kana. They teach both “area” and “side” for the kanji, but then only “side” for the stand-alone vocab, which I think is intentional.
I think the very first reply being someone who thinks that the word 辺 exclusively refers to sides is proof enough that the entry needs to change.
I’ll elaborate just a bit more: the usage of 辺 to mean “side” is limited to mathematics. You can only say things like, “三角の辺” and have it mean side. It is just for geometric shapes. If you wanted to say “the side of my house” and used “家の辺” it would cause some confusion, because you would have just said “the area near my house”.
Here’s entirety of the WaniKani vocab entry’s definition:
“One of the kanji meanings is side, and as a standalone word this also means side, as in the sides of a shape.“
‘As a standalone word this also means side’ is pretty ambiguous, right? What I think it’s gesturing at is that this is a secondary definition. The first entry in any dictionary is “area, vicinity”.
If what they mean is “the other definition typically only appears in Xの辺 constructions,” well, I’m sorry to say but that doesn’t matter. It’s still a whole noun, as evidenced by the fact that other nouns need to use の to modify it. It would just be a wild, ad hoc way to, for some reason, teach grammar.
It also says, ‘as in, the sides of a shape,’ which is extremely imprecise. Are they using shapes as a referent, or are they limiting it to shapes? That’s down to what the reader infers.
No part of this is clear that this is a secondary definition of the same word as the この辺 entry, exclusively limited to geometric shapes.
I honestly only thought as a stand alone vocab it only meant side until now because that is how it was being taught but “家の辺” definitely means “the area near my house” and not “the side of my house.” You’ve convinced me, it seems like a mistake. The patterns of use they give for Xの辺 on the vocab for 辺 are all it being used as “side” of a shape. No indication that you can also Xの辺 to refer to the area of something by adding a location similar to この辺. It definitely reads as if they are teaching you that as standalone the only meaning is “side,” exclusively to be used for shapes, even though the far more common standalone meaning is still “area.”