This word simply use in many sentences of N3 level. And for me strange to see a lot of words starts from 発 but not this.
2 Likes
WaniKani’s here to teach kanji, not vocab. Vocab is included to reinforce kanji readings, not be a definitive list of all the vocab you’ll ever need, because it’s certainly not that. As you observed, there’s plenty of words included already that cover 発, and there’s also plenty of words covering the めい reading of 明, so what new information does 発明 bring to the table?
1 Like
I agree with you, but I’d like to also extend the point to the fact that there are many words on wanikani already guilty of this.
1 Like
Seeing that redundancy alone is rarely enough to decide whether a word is added to the curriculum or not, what, in your opinion, is the real make-or-break for whether a word should be added or not?
As in what do I think WK is using to decide or what do I personally think should ideally be the criteria?
For the former I think WK does generally try to add words that follow increasing complexity and rarity, but they definitely don’t seem to have any strict guidelines. It’s been awhile since I got 60, but one thing I distinctly remember thinking as I started learning from VNs was how wk seems to pick out a lot of “not common at all but relatively obvious from the kanji combination” type words. I feel like I had a distorted view of how much “sense” jukugo would make and I think it also plays into why beginners think kanji meaning is so much more important than it really is in the grand scheme of things. Since its december looking at level 12, you have stuff like 本流、短期、短刀、歯医者、北西、船員、落ち葉 and 洋食 which are pretty much exactly what you would expect reading wise and meaning wise, but none of them are even in the top 15000 words in my frequency dictionaries. I would expect most people who are around N1 to have encountered at least half of those, but they are taught at the same time as 彼, and before 感じ・感じる which are some of the most common japanese words in existence. I think the reason WK adds them in is just because they are low hanging fruit to help the user feel like they are learning. Words like 発明 who’s definitions aren’t as obvious won’t have that effect and don’t get preferential treatment.
My personal opinion is I wish all that fluff would be cut out. words like 北西 feels effectively the same as having an extra kanji card for 北 and 西 floating around in your srs pile for some reason.
3 Likes
I don’t think that separate kanji and vocabulary is the effective way to study language. And I also think isn’t possible to do this. So, I only mentioned that will be better to add another one, not because of my intention but because I encountered this word in examples.
1 Like
Unfortunately WK is not a system for learning all the vocab you need. It’s a closed set designed to teach you the kanji and kanji readings, not an open system you can add your own vocab to. At some point you’re going to need to figure out some way that works for you for learning words you find that aren’t in WK, because “ask the WK staff to add them all” won’t work 
4 Likes