Before I ever knew WaniKani existed I was happily learning vocabulary using iKnow for a few years on and off. So by the time I started using WK I already have a relatively large vocabulary. This meant that on the early WK levels I knew most of the vocabulary in the lessons and so have been using the reorder script to just skip over them now and learn only Kanji and continue with vocabulary lessons in iKnow.
I do intend to eventually do all the vocabulary lessons on WK so I can get that cake, but only after I finish iKnow (I have been doing it so long that Iām too stubborn to quit it now). Iām just wondering if you think this will hurt my progress. So far I donāt feel like it has but long term I am not sure
Gonna be honest - this might come back to bite you. In the early levels, yes, a lot of it is vocab that you will see other places. But WK vocab is not based on how useful it is, and you do get less common vocab, even at lower levels, because it reinforces kanji readings. People do prioritize and skip vocab, but that does eventually leave you with a LOT of vocab lessons to get through.
Might be helpful to look at it this way - if youāve already learned it on iKnow, youāre probably going to get all the reviews right, thatās 8 reviews over 5 (6?) months - it wonāt take you super long, and shouldnāt get stuck making your apprentice count high by failing repeatedly. If you donāt know it well enough from iKnow, you get some extra reviews.
To me, Iād rather go through the known words quickly for that handful of reviews and know that when I eventually reach levels where I really need to do the vocab, I donāt have a giant mountain of it to look at. It really does help reinforce readings and teach you alternate readings that you will need for unknown higher level vocab with higher level kanji.
Up to you how you use WK, really - personally, Iāve read a lot of posts from people who found that skipping vocab bit them in the butt eventually (but I suspect it does also depend how large your large vocabulary is).
Repitition is key for memory retentionļ¼which tends to be the idea Wanikani lives by.
Iād say thereās probably more harm to not doing the vocab than there is to doing the vocab. Just because you know the vocab, whatās the harm in doing it? If anything, it will just further enforce it into your memory. And of course, will mean you wonāt have a huge stack to get through later, which is a nice bonus.
Itās great that youāve been able to use another tool to learn a bunch of Japanese vocab, but again, wheres the harm in solidifying that vocab into your mind using Wanikani?
This is just my honest opinion though, so feel free to disregard
Itās also just a long running joke here. éåæ and ę²³č± are two of the most commonly referenced āuselessā vocab words to the point that most community vets probably learned those words from the hate threads and other heated discussions prior to getting the actual lessons for them.
éåæ was recently removed and replaced with a more common term, but it still holds a special place in my heart.
I donāt think itās hurting in any way if you already know the words. The ultimate goal is learning Japanese, not finishing Wanikani. So if you already learned that from somewhere else youāre not really getting much from WK, maybe some extra reinforcement but itās up to you to decide if you need it and if itās worth the extra time that you spend on the reviews/lessons.
Of course you need to keep in mind that the goal of WK is for you to learn kanji, if you know the words but cannot identify them in kanji Iād say then itās time to stop skipping them
You canāt do this indefinitely since you canāt finish all kanji lessons if you donāt also do vocab lessons. (thereās a limit on how many pending lessons you can have).
Frankly, I donāt see the issue. I knew most vocab lessons as well when I started doing WK. Easy peasy. Speed through the lessons in one go, review with high accuracy. Done! lv 1-10 is over before you know it.
Youāll soon start to be much more dependent on having vocab lessons to hammer those kanji readings into your mind, and using the vocab like this is the intended reason for them being present to begin with. Plus the additional kunāyomi that youāll miss. Doing these things out of order (learning kanji now, then going back to add more kanji readings with vocab) seems counterproductive.
And as I initially said, you canāt reach lv 60 this way.
It seems to me that I should be doing the vocabulary even if I do already know most of them so far. And as @ekg pointed out it will actually hamper my progression eventually if I do keep skipping them.
My biggest issue in the beginning was not just that I already knew most of the words but it was also trying to juggle all the reviews in not only iKnow and WK but also Bunpro. But I guess I just need to find a right balance of all 3.
Oh yeah itās like speaking Shakespearian in Japanese.
I had a group of Japanese peeps Iād hang with while in school over thereā¦ you know a mingling type situation to learn from each other. Weād go out to eat, shrines etc.
I taught a 17 year old student there named Yuuki some bad words in English (Iām a perfect role model), and I asked him questions in Japaneseā¦ I asked him about bad words in Japanese, he only taught me shine, which to be honesty was a good word to learn itās in a lot of movies/anime etc. He had absolutely no idea what satogokoro was. Not only that but several āolderā 20ās / 30ās I asked believed they heard the word before but were not sure about it.
It was only with my older Japanese friends who knew about the wordā¦ My now business partner showed me at a Mr. Max that they were selling Satogokoro Miso Paste there. Thatās the only place Iāve ever seen it used in public.
Soā¦ yeah, itās pretty old school stuff. I got bitched out about bringing it up long ago on WaniKani when I was living in Japan and going to school ā¦ flips off the trolls of wanikani.
