"acceptable" errors

WaniKani
#1

One thing that has saved me a handful of times is that the system doesn’t penalize for simple errors – for example, accepting a handful of common misspellings in English… or allowing a do-over when you provide KUN for Kanji vs the ON it was expecting. I appreciate this.

Well, one thing that has been really frustrating me is the auto-kana… For instance, anytime I need to use ん, if it’s at the end of a word, leaving as a roman n works fine… but if it’s in the middle of a word preceding なにぬねの, then that characters ‘n’ is being eaten. So as a result, if I am typing ‘onna’ to answer おんな, the system is giving me おんあ instead. I understand using ‘nn’ to force ん, but most other platforms account for this… so when i type something out that I know and press enter without double checking, it’s a bit frustrating when my input was accurate but the system tricked me up.

1 Like
#2

Welcome to the site :slight_smile:

Just to be clear, that’s not WaniKani being lenient with an error. It’s not an error to answer with the other reading for a kanji. But since they want to confirm that you learned the one they taught, they ask for you to answer with that one before they let you move on. Otherwise, you could repeatedly answer with a rarely used, obscure reading.

This is pretty standard for IMEs. Do you have an IME for your computer to type in Japanese generally? They basically all handle things the same.

4 Likes
#3

I found it pretty frustrating at first too and am getting used to it. I use a userscript to ignore my answer whenever I make errors like these so that I can try again and am not penalized.

2 Likes
#4

No, no they really don’t. The issue is because “onna” is ambiguous - you could just as easily mean おんな as おんあ. For example, 音圧 (おんあつ) means “sound pressure”. To avoid the ambiguity, you’re pretty much always required to type two letters to get ん. Typing nn is fairly common, because you’ve got your finger on the N key already, but n’ works too - so, say, when you’re typing おんな, you don’t have to type “onnna” with three Ns; you can type “on’na” instead.

6 Likes
#5

Yeah, sometimes if you type too fast, it doesn’t register double-keystrokes. So for things like ん and っ which require those, it’ll trip you up and mark them wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I typed さんにん for 三人 and got さにん or さんいん instead.

Sometimes you just gotta be gentle with it. I use the script that lets you ignore wrong answers, but you have to be very responsible with its usage or you can end up passing yourself on a lot of things that you don’t really know because you’re just like, “Oh, yeah… I knew that! Ignore!” but you really didn’t.

2 Likes
#6

This rather annoyed me early on as well. My personal solution was to basically condition myself to consider “nn” to be the only correct way to type “ん”, and that if I ever typed it as just one “n” and the IME helpfully fixed it up for me I was doing it wrong and the IME was just being condescendingly kind to a silly noob who doesn’t know any better. Since I was able to just flip that mental switch, the problem just went away and I never misspelled “おんな” again.

Just to be clear, I don’t consider people who make this mistake to be silly noobs who don’t know any better. I just convinced myself that I was a silly noob to motivate me to change my ways. Some people learn best with positive reinforcement. I learn best with someone standing behind me with a rolled-up newspaper, ready to whack me across the head at the slightest mistake. Even better is if that someone is a computer who won’t feel sorry for me :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#7

So, I use IME on Windows, Mac, and Android all the time. All of them default “onna” to 女 as suggestion #1. If I escape of that, I get おんな and オンナ as suggestions #2 and #3. It’s almost as if I have to go through extra effort to get おんあ to appear. These things are all built on statistics and modeling – 音圧 comes out ahead once you add the “tsu” and producing 女つ then requires the extra effort. Agreed that technically “onna” is ambiguous in that regard, but statistically, if I stop there, おんな is the intention.

That said, nn is always a way to force an ん, no debate there, but on no other platform do I generally neeeeed to do that to get what I am going for, which is where my frustration comes from.

#8

You mean it offers 女 as a choice after hitting space bar or something? Initially it’ll show おんあ though, right? I mean… All WaniKani cares about is do you know the hiragana reading. And some people might actually think it’s おんあ and want to type that.

I had never even tried to type onna for 女 into an IME until this topic. How long have you done it that way?

1 Like
#9

That sounds analogous to auto correct. You can get away with typing some outright gibberish on an English keyboard, and autocorrect will most often suggest the thing you meant. If you turn off autocorrect you need to type more carefully.

9 Likes
#10

But the point of WK’s review isn’t that you got the reading almost correct. It’s that you got it completely correct. That’s why it should always reject おんあ or おな because it is simply not correct regardless of what an autocomplete keyboard might do.

You say this, but it’s not true. I use Google’s IME for Chrome extension and to get おんな to come out correctly in kana you have to type nn. This is the same as when I use the built-in MacOS IME as well. They both require you to hit n twice in order to get ん otherwise you will get な, に, etc. That an autocomplete keyboard will heuristically match おんあ or おな to 女 doesn’t mean either of those readings are correct.

#11

Okay, so I stand corrected – :disappointed:
I am so used to getting most of the way through a word (in English too) and using the suggest bar that it turns out that the only IME actively correcting was MacOS (where I was replying from before). Windows, Android, and GoogleTranslate all result in おんあ however, most of them also have おんな and 女 right there for the choosing. Apologies on that…

I do still contend that it’s a little odd that all of these systems basically have a use-case where romanji input does not equal kana output… And since the basic levels of most of my previous Japanese studies were all “for busy people” and romanji based, that stuff wants to come out quickly and I never think to add the second n. I guess I have to train myself :-\

5 Likes
#12

Honestly for me, it just feels like I need to get used to those little errors. Recognizing you need to use the kun vs on reading is getting a tiny bit easier, and so does all the errors with just typing.

#13

I would LOVE a second chance feature that saves me when I accidentally write the hiragana hatsuon when it’s asking me for the english meaning. I do that more than I should…

#14

If I’m not mistaken, it is like that already for some days. I remember it happening a few times - I entered (correct) reading in place of meaning, and got screen shake instead of being marked wrong. It was a pleasant surprise.

Can anybody confirm if I’m not imagining things?

Otherwise, Double Check script is the way to go - but then it is easy to abuse it.

#15

I have just done a review with disabled scripts and tested this, but I got marked wrong. You probably are just using the Double Check script, which got this feature added a few months ago.

2 Likes
#16

Ah, I see, so this feature was added to the script, no to the site itself. (And yes, I’m using Double Check)

1 Like
#17

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