Hello! New user here. I’ve already decided I want a lifetime sub, but I’m also just here to whine.
Counting days is weird and hard, just a fact of life, but the mnemonics are bad and not helpful. The stories are fine, but none of the mnemonics attach the actual number of days with the mnemonic itself. So yeah, we have yogurt for 8 days, but the mnemonic itself includes nothing to attach the 8 to the story.
Is there anything else further down the line like this? I feel like I’m mostly having to brute force these ones, which is fine, but the whole point of WaniKani is to not use brute force.
On the upside, I’m seeing success already even at these low levels as the kanji enters my brain and my reading. I’m reading low-level tadoku material and have noticed I read much faster if there’s kanji (as long as I know them). In my Anki, I’m seeing kanji that are way above my WaniKani level, but I’m looking forward to catching up, and when I do know something from WaniKani, it makes it a lot easier.
I think the days are pretty exceptional, and they were a big stumbling block for me initially as well (back long before I knew what wanikani was, I was very discouraged from learning Japanese when I learned that even just the numbers had two totally separate systems for pronouncing them…)
that being said, I disagree with you about the mnemonic. Here’s the page that I see:
Words that count days use an exceptional reading. Even though this is a jukugo word, it uses kun’yomi readings for both the kanji. Think about this word this way:
Every eighth day you have to buy yogurt to fuel your car (ようか). Your car runs on yogurt, but it needs to be refilled every eight days to keep running. It’s really inconvenient because it’s just ONE day more than a week. And a week just feels better. Oh well.
While of course you are right that the sound “yogurt” has nothing to do with “eighth day”, unfortunately that ain’t changing, right? the point of learning to read this word will always be to connect the idea of “eighth day” to the sound ようか. So, to make WK mnemonics work for you, don’t push at them, but do try to read along and really try to imagine having to fuel your car with yogurt every eight days. Feel how inconvenient that extra day makes it to fit into your weekly routine. Ideally, in a couple months when it’s time to burn this card, it will already be totally learned through use, BUT if you need the mnemonic, here’s how remembering mnemonics usually goes for me:
“Hmmm so the kanji are eight and day, so probably eight days or eighth day… What was the story again? Oh yeah, I guess it’s eighth day because I have to do something about … wait what? yogurt? a car? Idk why I’m thinking of those things, but that’s what I—OHHHH rightrightright ようか, sweet, thanks!”
Right, I get it; it would just be better if there was something in the story to connect the eight to the yogurt. That’s actually a better one, because it’s one more day than 7… but stuff like the one where it’s like “mui bien! my car!”, while it connects to the sound for sure, that one has even less connection to the actual number of days one is counting. The one for two days is pretty good, a two-foot car, because it connects to both the sound and the number (though they could have emphasized it more).
I’m sure I’ll get it anyway! And even if there was some desperate reason where I literally just could never get it, life would go on, even if I couldn’t count days. I’m more concerned about being able to recognize it in writing and speech when someone else is counting days (or whatever else) than to necessarily be able to do it myself (but I’m sure I will!).
No it was helpful! Sorry I gave the wrong impression. I just have to muscle through and strengthen the connection between the sounds and numbers. I’ll get there eventually!
Fwiw, you’re totally right that the WK mnemonics for these are horrible. It’s the same problem for all the numbers because there’s no connection between the number and the mnemonic. It’s all just “imagine x number of items” or whatever, then when you get to reviews you’re like, wait, did I have nine coconuts or nine yachts.
The nightmare still haunts me , i have developed a special love for tacos , ms. chyuu (i used to get chou in my mind wrong ) , coconuts and many more . I have even started to do wierd things during the lessons (like shooting all the windows in my house) , my sister saw me a few times and then said to my father this exact statement “He was wierd but now its like he went total bonkers” i cried but no tears came out
I didn’t use mnemonics to learn these and I think (although mnemonics are great) that is the way. You will come across them so often and there are patterns with other counted things that it will become obvious and natural to you over time. Trying to remember things like how many days to fill up your yogurt car or whether you have 9 yachts or coconuts sounds like torture to me personally.
My hot take is make some lists or find the counters list at the back of the genki textbook (or tofugu has a big pdf somewhere) and study from this until you memorize a few of both types (the most common are counting people, minutes, hours, days, small objects). For me it was a matter of listing them out and noticing the similarities and differences that helped. You’ll come across them again and again and you will memorize them eventually, until then just reference the list.
Mnemonics are most effective for me for the abstract words with loads of strokes and look-alike kanji that I come across often enough to kinda remember but not quite enough to distinguish
I don’t have problem with these currently, and I’ve forgotten how I remembered those, but…
rather than pre-written, (wishfully) vivid, strong and hyper-memorable, mnemonics – I wouldn’t mind weak, adaptive, creative, mnemonic device… relying more on repetition (with SRS) and recalling immersion experience as time goes by. That’s a good reason the my mnemonics might rather be in Japanese as well. Not so vivid, but it somehow works. Or more often, no mnemonics at all.
eight yachts (imagine digits on the side of the ship front)
nine coconuts (imagine a coconut tree looking like 9)
just like children’s nursery rhyme
Honestly, counting could easily be a disaster, with or without mnemonics.
tbh, i’m halfway done with level 3 and so far, in general, i haven’t found the mnemonics particularly useful, especially when it comes to readings. i was surprised, and wary at first, because i felt like, “isn’t the mnemonics supposed to be the main selling point of wanikani?” – in fact, i was so impressed with how effective tofugu’s mnemonics were for learning the kana, that i felt extra disappointed by the realisation that i don’t like wanikani’s as much…
i’ve had to think really hard about it for a couple weeks, but i think i’m still planning to subscribe at the end of this level. even if the mnemonics often feel too nonsensical to be effective (for me personally, at least), the structure and pacing of wanikani does still feel really nice, compared to other services ive looked at.
and anyway, i’m not even certain that the mnemonics truly arent helping. i’ve been consistently hitting 90-95% in my reviews, which was frustrating at first because almost all of my mistakes are with newly learned words at the apprentice 1 or 2 level. it seems i often just have to get things wrong a time or two before it starts to stick in my brain, but after that i do find myself recalling the moment of pronunciation in the mnemonics even if i dont remember any of the rest of the story surrounding those moments
so yea, just felt like sharing my thoughts in a thread that seems somewhat related. hopefully if there are other new users who feel similarly, they might feel encouraged by this !
Honestly I barely ever look at mnemonics, sometimes I just make my own up if I really need them. What I really find valuable is the flow of radicals into kanji, as well the curated vocab. Learning the radicals is huge, because it’s also how you learn how to tell kanji apart when they get more complex AND how you look kanji up in many online dictionaries once you’re out there doing independent reading.
Is there anything else further down the line like this? I feel like I’m mostly having to brute force these ones, which is fine, but the whole point of WaniKani is to not use brute force.
hmmm i think this is a hard one to answer.
over the course of my WK journey i have found (roughly) about a third of mnemonics to be “very good, top tier comedy, will never forget them”, another third to be “plain ok“, and the last third to be “belongs in the trash”
for the garbage tier i have mostly come up with my own mnemonics, but the other two thirds have helped me just fine in remembering.
and lastly i want to say that i bet these divisions and which mnemonics fit into which category likely varies from people to people. For example one that really stuck with me is 送, the one about sending your soul (そう) somewhere. I’ve no idea why but i can perfectly picture putting my soul (a little fire-like glowy thing) in a box and sending it via mail somewhere. Though i’m sure a bunch of people don’t find this mnemonic helpful nor is it easy for them to visualize it.
I feel like a counting system should be taught and mastered before entering a new one. My mistakes are more related to confusing it with another counting system being taught and the exact same time. Unnecessary confusion.
this is the kind of experience you’d get in a class or going through a textbook! I’d say viewing WK as a resource for learning 100% of Japanese is probably not the best strategy.
90-95% is good! It’s normal to make mistakes on newly learned kanji/vocab, just as much as if not more than items you learned long ago. I agree that Tofugu’s mnemonics for the kana were very effective, but I think that might just be because it’s easier to learn kana in general. Kana are very simplistic characters and they only need to tie the mnemonics to a single sound, so I think they were able to have much more creativity with creating the mnemonics. Whereas the kanji are highly complex characters, often have multiple syllables, vocab combines characters, and they are trying to get you to remember both meaning and reading, so there is only so much you can do.
At least for me, the mnemonics help the most when I’m struggling. They’re not always needed when the kanji/vocab is easier but a lot of the time when I actually have to sit and think to recall a meaning/reading, I only remember it because of the mnemonic.
