At level 46 we’re taught 庄 with the only vocabulary word 庄園 (manor).
What surprises me is that, as far as I can tell, 庄 is just a less common variant spelling of 荘 (taught later at level 54 with different vocab). On top of that 庄 is not jouyou, while 荘 is.
Lastly when I look up 庄園 in hiragana on jisho, the first match is 荘園 with 庄園 listed only as a variant. In fact even right now typing these words in my IME, 荘園 came first while 庄園 came 4th.
So, what’s the rationale for teaching 庄 long before 荘? It seems rather confusing to me. Is 庄 really a useful kanji to know?
Yeah I did notice that it came up in proper nouns, but that’s not what WK teaches so it confused me a bit.
I really find the kanji selection bit strange as I get into the high levels. There are still some very common kanji that are quite far away (寂 for instance, or 扉 just now at level 47) but we’re taught kanji and vocab that can be pretty niche in the meantime.
I don’t think Ive ever seen it period. I showed it to a coworker and she didn’t know either but she knew 荘園, though she made it clear it’s not something they actually use nowadays and would only come up if you study history maybe.
So I would say the answer is “poor vocabulary and kanji choices”
I searched for 庄 in a discord server I’m in, and it did pass the “this has shown up in a tweet shared in a discord server of pro wrestling fans” test, haha. Here it is in a tweet by Sanshiro Takagi. The context was “大阪府豊中市庄内は今日も平和です。” (so, a place name).
I searched for 荘 as well and only got a handful of results, most of which were also place names.
So I can’t speak to the value of its inclusion more broadly, but for my purposes, which includes “being able to read every tweet I see on my pro wrestling twitter feed”, both kanji are useful to me.
As far as I can tell it’s mostly used as a rarer variant of 準? The associated vocabulary is pretty niche too as far as I can tell, although not entirely obscure.
The only related kanji I’ve seen is 圧 (notice it doesn’t have a blip on top!) and that one’s fairly common. Can’t say I’ve ever come across 荘園, only 別荘 which is not the same thing I guess?
