Hello! I hope this it’s not a stupid question but is there a userscript to make me write all the meanings of a kanji/vocab? Like for 辞 for example. It means quit and word too. Two different meanings and I bet you my brain will forget the meaning I don’t write in the reviews. I know it sounds like a sadistic thing to do but I really don’t want to forget them. Or do you have a strategy how to write both? I can try to write a meaning once and then the other meaning when the kanji comes back but i will forget i want to do that…
Any thoughts? (sorry if someone already asked this, i tried to search for a topic like this but failed to find something!)
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You can add a synonym that covers both if you want. Like just “quit and word” or something. But to make word order not important, you’d probably want to also add “word and quit” so you’re not punishing yourself for forgetting something irrelevant.
But that means that kanji with 3, 4, or more meanings would get kinda crazy.
Ultimately I’d say, you’ll remember the full range of meanings through the vocab, so it’s not that big of a deal to not cover both in each kanji review.
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I don’t know of any userscript, but if you think it’ll be manageable you could add something like “quit, word” and “word, quit” as synonyms.
Such a suerscript would likely get kind of repetitive, as a lot of the synonyms are just different ways of saying the same thing in English (i.e. 年来 - 1. some years, 2. for some years). Somebody would have to go through the glosses and decide which ones are significant.
That being said, I think you’re better off learning the meanings through vocabulary; that way, rather than memorizing a list of meanings, you’re learning how they show up in their different contexts.
Lists of meanings are rarely exhaustive, in any event, and glosses can be misleading; with languages as different as English and Japanese, “X means Y” really just means “the meaning of X has a significant overlap with the meaning of Y”.
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Yeah, take 卒 for example.
WaniKani lists the meaning as “graduate” with no synonyms.
The original meaning of 卒 is “soldier” as still seen in the word 兵卒.
Over time this expanded to just “underling,” as seen in 従卒.
Next we have the meaning of “end” or “finish,” which is the actual meaning used in 卒業.
Then we have “sudden” or “hasty.” This shows up in words like 卒然 or 卒倒.
And lastly we have “die,” as seen in 卒去.
So there you have it, 5 meanings for 卒, some of which are related to each other abstractly, others are kind of hard to see the connections, but WK went with “graduate” because the only word there that the vast majority of learners of Japanese will need to know is 卒業 (literally 業を卒えること).
So take WK meanings with a grain of salt and don’t kill yourself trying to adhere to them. And remember that WK is just the first step in studying kanji.
The meanings I mentioned are based on this entry from kanjipedia.
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I tend to just write one definition and say the other one in my head.
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I see, thanks for the reply! I won’t get so worked up about the meanings and try to concentrate on the vocab usage. Thanks for taking your time to reply!
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