Hi guys, i just bought the annual subscription and i’m one review away from level 4. I want to ask approximately when you’ll eventually be able to understand the example phrases proposed under the vocabulary pages.
That depends. Are you studying grammar alongside WK?
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yes, i started to study the Genki textbook when i hit level 3 and now i’m at chapter six. Apart from grammatical structure that of course being at the very start of the textbook i don’t understand, the problem with the phrases is that they use a lot of words in hiragana that i don’t know
WaniKani won’t teach you those.
You’re gonna need a source of vocabulary. WaniKani happens to have some useful words, but the focus of the vocabulary is to reinforce the kanji - as a source of vocabulary, WaniKani is not great, to say the least. Very few kana-only words (and you won’t learn them as kana-only words, rather you’ll learn them rarely-used kanji and all), and some of the most common words come at very late levels, whereas some rarely used words come very early.
Torii, Anki or something similar for the first ~1000-2000 most common words gets you pretty far, and from there on you can start learning by reading stuff and just learning the words you don’t know yet.
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thank you very much, i’m gonna learn vocabulary from another source in parallel to WK and grammar
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For vocabulary, Kitsun.io is the way to go.
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I’d argue if it’s just about acquiring the first 1000-2000 most common words Anki with a core 2.3k deck works just as well, or Torii but only do the first 1000-2000 words of the core 10k in there (Torii is more interactive so that might help things stick better, plus it’s easier to set up than Anki). Saves you yet another monthly subscription for the time being, and where Kitsun really shines IMO is in the ability to serve as a dictionary that seamlessly integrates with an SRS, so if you’re expanding your vocabulary from stuff you read/listen to, you’re going to have a very convenient tool in it - but that’s likely not going to be until later on.
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That site seems great, but i’m still a college student so i can’t ask my parents for another subscription. I think i’m gonna take the SRS approach of WK and Kitsun and implement it in a program of my own that i can try to code. Fortunately i’m a computer science student, so it won’t be super difficult
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There’s zero need to build something yourself. As an academic exercise, sure, but for convenience? Just go with what’s already available.
If it’s just about an SRS that can teach you anything and everything, go for Anki. It’s not as flashy as Kitsun but it’s free and there’s more community-provided ready-made decks than you can work through in a lifetime.
If it’s about vocab specifically and you want something that checks your answers similarly to WaniKani, there’s Torii: https://torii-srs.com/
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The problem with Anki is that you need to self evaluate yourself, and also it’s difficult to make custom cards with kanji.
“It’s difficult to make custom cards with kanji so I’ll make my own application” is the most programmer thing I’ve heard in my life, I love it 
For creating cards there are also plenty of resources available: GitHub - klieret/anki-card-templates: Anki Cards for learning Japanese
As for the self-evaluation, yeah, that’s true. But you have WaniKani for kanji without self-evaluation, and Torii takes that out of your hands for vocab, so I’m not sure what you’re hoping to gain by building it yourself 
That said, if you think building something that better fits your needs is the way to go, I’m not gonna tell you you’re wrong. I just personally think you might be overestimating the benefit you gain from it, and underestimating the effort involved (the eternal programmer struggle)
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Yeah I know it was the programmer blood in me that was talking lol.
Thank you, i’m gonna use Torii for the vocab and then i’ll try to use Anki with that template.
If i’ll become mad, i think i’m gonna resort to really code an SRS program myself ahahah
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