Advanced Japanese Learner--how long would it take me to reach the last quarter of the course?

Yeah I had trouble mostly from the kanji that look alike (they tend to increase around the 1,200+ mark). So I do think it would be nice to take a step back, learn the radicals, but not so much that I have to take 45 weeks to do it…

Yeah, I’m just missing the last 300-500 kanji. I based this off a joyo kanji dictionary I have: it’s random kanji interspersed with ones I know towards the back of the book. There are also a bunch of kanji I can identify when combined with another but not by themselves, so it would be nice to “complete” my knowledge so to speak.

Is there an Anki deck you recommend?

Nah, I just learned kanji by rote. And a lot through reading. I learned over a decade ago before Youtube or smartphones even existed.

My system is pretty shitty if I say so myself :fearful:

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WK might not be for you but, if you are interested you could think of it as review? Might be boring, really boring at first, but if you know around 1000 you could double that in maybe a year if you did your reviews on time. You can always hang out with us here. :wolf:

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Honestly, I can’t really give you a recommendation, as I’m not one´of those people that have Anki mastered. Remembering the Kanji would probably not solve your problem either, as it doesn’t approach kanji readings, am I correct?

In a worst case scenario, you can use Houhou software to manually add the kanji missing.

Also, there’s a deck made my one of our lovely Anki Masters @polv with kanji post-WK.

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WK is pretty famous for teaching less common words in some levels, so that might be something for you :stuck_out_tongue:

Really? I’ll test drive the first few levels then–I don’t really mind reviewing the earlier kanji (as I’ve forgotten how to write them due to being typing-dependent), just the fact that I’m constrained to learn only X number of kanji at X amount of time, with no way to skip.

This does seem like a good community :blush: I’ll keep in touch!

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I’d highly suggest Houhou! It’s an SRS application that works very similar to WaniKani. You’d have to come up with your own mnemonics, but you can add kanji and vocab at your own pace as opposed to being on a set course you already know most of. It’s really useful for when you really like WK’s style of reviewing but the actual content isn’t what you need.

All the radicals are listed in the kanji page and every kanji has the radicals used in it listed on its page. You can use that to help you learn the radicals and start looking for them in the kanji you’re learning c:

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Wow! Thanks a lot!

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How did you pass N1 with only 1000 kanji? Is that possible?

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Sounds interesting! I will check it out. Thanks!

Because I knew more than 1,000 kanji. I just stopped studying after the 1,000+ mark, but that didn’t mean I stopped learning (direct from native sources).

However, it’s true that when I passed the exam I did not know all 2,000-ish joyo kanji. But it didn’t pose a big problem because the N-levels emphasize context more, so I was able to know most of the vocabulary/kanji from context. I’m good at identifying kanji in context because that’s how I learned most of them (through osmosis). I took the exam before the N-level revision and failed, because a large portion of the exam was identifying kanji in isolation (which I suck at).

That said, I still don’t know all the required kanji, hence this post!

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I am literally in the same situation as you (based on your first post).
I decided to go with WK because I cannot trust myself with Anki (it’s too easy for me to go “eeeh close enough”).

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Oh man, I thought about tagging you here :heart:

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I have a suggestion for how you could use WaniKani (assuming you like it) to learn the kanji/vocab you want to without going through the whole year+ course.

Once you subscribe (even for only a month), you are able to view all the radicals, kanji and vocab on the site. You could then download the (free) userscript called “WaniKani Self Study Quiz Edition”. This allows you to test yourself at your own pace even on locked items (i.e. items that haven’t come up yet in your WaniKani lessons). And that way, you wouldn’t need to waste time on things you have already mastered.

Doing it that way, you wouldn’t be using the built-in SRS, but you could use the tool and your own self-discipline to really study the kanji/vocabulary you need to, using the nicely laid out WaniKani website. This might be a convenient option for someone with a lot of kanji knowledge already, and even better if like many people, you didn’t enjoy using Anki.

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It’s taken a year for me to get to level 40. I reckon I knew about 200-300 kanji when I started. The order of WK isn’t necessarily the order you learnt them in but of course there’ll be loads of repetition. I plan to work through KKLC (which I use now for the nicer mnemonics) and read more when I’ve burnt all kanji on WK. I’m not a huge fan of Anki but may use that or similar.

WK is a big commitment (part of the reason it’s so good) and if you are eager to get to the “next” 1000 probably not the right choice. That said, if you need to be forced to get your head down and learn then it’s ideal.

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Wow, thanks so much for this suggestion. I’m amazed at the knowledge and tools this community provides :slight_smile:

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I just wanted to say that I would have never learned as many kanji as I know now, and as well as I know them, without Wanikani.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt you to go again through the 1000+ you already know in order to learn the last 1000~ you don’t know yet.

But, I don’t trust myself to come up with another system to learn as well as I am learning right now, maybe you can? I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it.

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At first, I misunderstood your description. I thought you meant, “subscribe for one month, then let your subscription expire and do all of Wanikani for free using the script”… which wouldn’t actually work, since you can only access levels 1-3 when your subscription ends. Besides, the people at WK need to get paid for their work.

But I think I understand that you meant, “use the script to study as fast as you want, and keep your subscription active for as long as it takes”. That would work, and WK would still get paid for their work, though probably not as much as if you had to go at WK’s pace. I’m not sure what they think of that, though it’s certainly better (for WK) than only paying for one month. :slight_smile:

I would add, though, that I went partway through WK a second time using only Self-Study, and even at an accelerated pace (and already having learned everything fairly well) it still took a lot more time to refresh each level than I expected it to take. But I guess I’m pretty strict with myself about having strong memorization.

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WK will not help you with radicals, in the sense of, say, the way the Kanji Kentei uses radicals. WK makes up their own radicals for the purposes of creating mnemonics.

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Yes, you got what I meant, not to cheat the system, but to use it as efficiently and beneficially as possible. @marimorimo or other users can use the site fully (or just part of it) as long as they want, for the period that they are paying subscribers. I don’t think that’s breaking either the spirit or the letter of the subscription agreement. Whether they’d be doing themselves any disservice would be up to them.

On the other hand, that was only a suggestion. If as stated, @marimorimo still has 1000 kanji and the attending vocabulary basically unlearned, that’s half the content of the site. So it may well be worthwhile going through the whole thing (especially considering that the kanji here isn’t taught in the same order as N5-N1, so you can’t assume that the kanji/vocab you need to learn is in the last 30 level.

ETA: at level 10, wkstats.com shows that I’ve already Guru’ed about 1/6 of N1or Joyo G9 kanji, so the early levels may not be not entirely a waste to the advanced learner.

E again TA: OK, the bar graph I was looking at first may have appeared a little optimistic, but in any case, definitely a few (7/1232) N1 Kanji. :cold_sweat:

That’s a bit disconcerting :frowning: I’ll check out the first 3 levels anyway to see if the made-up radicals work for me.

If not, I’m considering going the book and paper route with the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course. An app would be more convenient though.