Youll learn to hate stuff like that. Having to remember which kanji come first in a word is rough because WK only actually teaches you the kanji that the word comprises, not the order. So be glad they are different!
Ex. 階段 and 段階 or 論理 and 理論
EDIT: Bonus when the radicals are reversed in a kanji like 郎 and 限
Agreed. My trick for 論理 is that I remember that logic makes you lonely, at least based on every logician that I have met so far.
手間 refers to ones time/effort. It is comprises 手 (hand, what you use to work in most cases) and 間 which is used to mark intervals of time among other things.
Pretty neato japanese people
sounds familiar to you?!
Seriously, dude. Unnecessary!
Don’t bother.
Yeah, we shouldn’t bother with trolls…
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May I revive a meme from 2014 to break the tension?
Well, that was a thing. Trying to get this thread back on track…
I think the biggest mind blow I’ve had so far is the regularity of verb conjugations. I’m so used to the plethora of exceptions in English (and even when I was learning Spanish) that having a nearly flawless conjugation pattern seems like a gift.
These line up much better when you look at French (or any other romantic language):
Tuesday - Mardi - Mars
Wednesday - Mercredi - Mercury
Thursday - Jeudi - Jupiter
Friday - Vendredi - Friday
As a further note for any interested, for English, those days were imperfectly mapped from Roman to Norse gods:
Tues = Tyr (god of war similar to Mars)
Wednes = Odin/Woden (god of wisdom, chief god … not really like Mercury)
Thurs = Thor (god of lightning … usually compared to Jupiter/Zeus or Hercules)
Fri = Freya (goddess of love/fertility/death … mapped to Venus)
I haven’t combed through all 190+ posts on here to see if anyone else mentioned this one but the one that keeps blowing my mind is the notion that sounds and how we hear them can be totally different, despite them being concrete ideas to us. For example, no matter how often I practice, I always come across words with syllables like ‘ga’ that end up sounding like a ‘na’ to my Western ear and then I have to remind myself that ‘ga’ is an approximation and not a universal sound and omg WHAT IS REALITY EVEN?! LANGUAGE IS A CONSTRUCT. WRITING SYSTEMS ARE A CONSTRUCT. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEEEEEEEEEEAN?
So that’s one of mine.
Also, how do I know that the way I perceive the color blue is the same way a Japanese person perceives it?
Never forget that the characters you assign to sounds are mere approximations. This is equally valid both for kana and rōmaji.
I mean, I wouldn’t call it a big realization but just the realization in general that I’m actually managing to learn this language day by day. ;-;
Like the other day, I was killing time in the lab at my job while talking to a co-worker and rummaging through drawers and such and I found a small box with a halogen lamp way in the back. And as I’m looking at it I look at the brand name and it’s “Hikari” and I’m just like “… that’s really obvious and clever!”
I guess really, every little thing is kind of like a mind blow for me. In one way or another. 
Or you could just say i’m still waiting for a true mind blow…
For me, after learning proper pronunciations of Japanese words we sometimes say in English, every time I think of the English pronunciation, I die a little inside.
sayoNAra
DOmo ariGAto
I know borrowing happens in a ton of languages, but damn. It just sounds so bad lol
For me, it was the discovery of 四字熟語 (yojijukugo, or vocab / idioms / expressions formed by four kanji). I found out that the Japanese version of “kill two birds with one stone” is 一石二鳥 and have been down many google rabbit holes about the origin and formation of 四字熟語 ever since.
輪ゴム for me. I grew up speaking Japanese with my father’s family so I’ve known the word since childhood but I had never bothered to learn how to read or write Japanese till much later in life. When I first came across it written after having learned the kanji, it was kinda one of those “oooooooooh, duuuuuuh” moments
I first encountered this word off of Wanikani, and that’s exactly how I remember it too.
Yesssssss. And especially words like sayonara! Anything that’s supposed to have the R-sounds in it, the English versions are horrible.