Something that I wanted to put my two cents on for WaniKani.
Maybe this is just me venting, but I noticed something while recalling some Japanese characters. When I use WaniKani, from what I see the characters I am questioned with, I can basically recall some of them with hiccups in terms of writing similar wording (like kyo, kyu, and kyuu (Maybe also kyou?))
But when trying to apply my knowledge outside of WaniKani, I’m like, “Wait, what’s the word, for example, for that Flat Energy word?” or “I know Now Sun means today, but what’s the word for it?”
Kinda similar to Hiragana and Katakana, mainly with ne, mi, and ri. But for that, most I figure out to remedy that is to just re-memorize them again.
I’m guessing for Kanji for WaniKani, I should do more than just “Look at the words and recall them”? Maybe like, “Here’s this word in Japanese (e.g., kyo, kyu); what might be the associated Kanji for that word, based on what you have learned so far?”
That’s normal, building all these associations between kanji, word, meaning and pronunciation takes a lot of time. WaniKani is just here to bootstrap the process, then diligent practice will do the rest.
In particular WaniKani is mainly concerned with teaching you how to read, therefore it focuses on training you to extract meaning and reading from the kanji forms, not the other way around. If you also want to practice production you can try something like KaniWani.
Have you tried to immerse yourself more. I have found that the sensation you describe don’t happen to me anymore with words that are common in manga and games, but happens frequently with words that are more common in academic texts. I recently read a manga with a baseball theme to help me solidify the baseball terms that I could not remember outside this webpage. I won’t say you should do that much with every word, but I have found that writing my own sentence, using the WK sentences as an example where I just change a word or two + immersion makes it so much more fun and easy to get my bang for my buck with the time I actually study. Hope that helps a bit, and if this is your first time studying Kanji, know that what you feel is really normal and a part of what being a beginner entails.
Not really a recommendation, but it’s KaniWani style that helped me with knowing that the word exists by sound, and associating the sound to the meaning. (Also helped with recognizing synonyms by taking notes and searching the web, with Anki or self-study quiz script. I am not sure about the actual production, as I don’t really compose paragraphs for everything, and not accounting for replying.)
Nonetheless, I don’t really need that for the first 20 levels or so. I didn’t start out Japanese with WaniKani.
Arguably, it may be listening/writing/grammar that helped me with accurate vocab reading, early on.
Fun fact: there are no kanji with a reading きゅ (except for one which might have that as a reading only used in names); きゅう is common. きょ is rarer than きょう but both do exist.
Also, this might not apply to you, but your wording here makes me wonder and it seems to be a not uncommon beginner confusion, so I’ll mention it just in case: it’s important to distinguish kanji from words. Words are what you need eventually to learn to read, to understand when you hear them, and (depending on your goals) perhaps to write. Kanji are merely a way of writing words, and the only reason to study them individually is to the extent that it makes the task of learning words easier. So knowing that きょう the word means “today” is useful; being able to write it is also useful; memorising “here’s a reading きょう for an individual kanji, which kanji have that reading?” is not.
@simias@polv I genuinely did not know that KaniWani even existed until you people mentioned about it. Definintely will look at it.
@simias Oh, so, basically, it’s likely by design where WaniKani has a specific focus, correct?
@Candygaming From the earlier thread I’ve made, I actually started wondering around Satori Reader to see what it’s about. It is, at my level, a bit hard to understand, but the much-needed definitions behind each word or particle are a huge surplus for me to understand the context.
I would’ve said Discord, but I can’t use that atm. The most I could think about in terms of immersion is likely going through some Japanese podcasts. Other than that, I still have the Nico Nico app where I was curious to know its culture in it.
@pm215 Whoops, guess I definitely need to go back on my reviews then, lol.
You might want to also look at KameSame. KaniWani is great. KameSame solves a couple of the things that some folks consider to be a minor issue in KaniWani and has some additional modes/functionality that may be useful or of interest.
I think so. In general learning Japanese is a vast undertaking. If you can’t allocate 8h daily to your studies then focusing on some areas and accepting that you’ll have shortcomings in other aspects of the language, at least at first, is probably necessary.
If you want to focus on reading I would recommend getting to WaniKani level 20 or so as fast as you feel comfortable then ramp up the grammar and use satori for practice. At first reading Japanese will always feel like solving riddles, but you have to keep pushing and eventually it becomes easier.
I don’t know if this helps, but if you don’t get on with the WK mnemonic and you can’t think of a better one. Try chat GPT. It’s given me a couple of good ones.
I recently read a manga with a baseball theme to help me solidify the baseball terms that I could not remember outside this webpage. I won’t say you should do that much with every word, but I have found that writing my own sentence, using the WK sentences as an example where I just change a word or two + immersion makes it so much more fun and easy to get my bang for my buck with the time I actually study. Hope that helps a bit, and if this is your first time studying Kanji, know that what you feel is really normal and a part of what being a beginner entails. 