Drawing Kanji and Vocabulary

I got ‘end’ and ‘not yet’ this time around :v:.

Unless I’m misremembering. Both entries accept ‘‘to fix’’. There isn’t one for ‘‘to be fixed’’. But it’s good to know either way that it applies here as well.

形「かたち」is troublesome for me. ~丁目「ちょうめ」I still get wrong.

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Here's what WaniKani shows for 直る.

Screenshot_20210629_103107

Having “to fix” as an alternate for 直る does muddy the waters a bit, especially since it’s an intransitive verb.

The English verb “fix” is used for both transitive and intransitive, which doesn’t help. Japanese uses す and る to distinguish between the two.

English definitions via Merriam-Webster (with emphasis and Japanese added by me):

Verb Type Definition Japanese
fix transitive to make firm, stable, or stationary 直す
fix intransitive to become firm, stable, or fixed 直る

In the long run, you’ll encounter these enough when reading/listening/watching native material that it will become obvious when 直す is used versus 直る. It just takes a bit of time and exposure.

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Ah ha! I get it. I thought it was ‘‘fix’’ in the sense of repairing something as opposed to make firm. I suppose it depends on the context and dictionary. You put one meaning on the table but there are more than one.

As mentioned previously, I decided to preview the upcoming Kanji in order to be ready for them when they pop up and level up faster. It’s not a race, I just want to give it my very best shot.

:one: 氏「し」on’yomi. This one has the general meaning of “family name” which isn’t that far off from the “clan” meaning of the radical.

Your family name is し (sheep), I think there’s a good chance I’ll remember that one.

:two: 民「みん」this one stands for people. It’s composed of ‘mouth’ + ‘clan’. So a clan of mouth is people. That should work too. People say ‘mean’ things about other people all the time. That should stick too.

:three: 失「しつ」In French, ‘shitsu’ means to crap yourself. So it’s your fault you crapped yourself.

The kanji reminds me of arrow but I arrow doesn’t have the extra bit on top.

:four: 家「か」I know this character from my time in China. I used to think it meant ‘family’ however so this might throw me for a loop due to interference. I might be misremembering.

I can recognize the kanji. You keep your car か in your house so that one is fine too.

I want to stick to less than 5 in my previews to avoid burnout.

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I should note that with that those English definitions, I meant to show the transitive vs intransitive, as English uses one word where Japanese uses two. You’re correct that (なお)す and (なお)る are primarily about repairing something (or, more specifically, returning something to its original state). Please ignore the “firm” meaning for the English word “fix”, and I apologize for any confusion there.

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Day 3: Preview
70 Review, 84%

As usual, instructive post mister Fritz, you make quite a scholar! :+1:

:dash: So I keep getting the reading for ‘Saturn’ wrong. I always hesitate between と and ど.
:dash: ‘Annual’ is screwing me up too. That’s one I miss pretty consistently.

Apart from that nothing really stood out.

Today’s Preview

:one: 時「じ」I know this one already. I think I learned it when I was doing the ‘Genki’ book. It means ‘time’.

:two: 紙【かみ】I knew this one also for some reason. Woven thread by the clan is paper. This will help identifying it however.

:three:記【き】This one is fun to remember. It’s like with a diary, you ‘write’ down things you say to yourself. As for the reading, ‘key’ like those diaries you can lock with a key.

:four:教【きょう】to teach. I think this one appears every time you launch WK. Either way, I’ve seen that kanji before. The reading might be tough. This has the same reading as ‘strong’ so only the ‘strong’ teach therefore, きょう. Time will tell whether or not this holds up.

:five:組【そ】This one is brand new to me. I don’t recall every being exposed to it. ‘Group’. A ‘group’ of top hat wearing folks held together by thread.

Making soap together? I think I might forget this one.

That’s it for today’s preview, I’m already 10 kanji ahead of learning them.

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I believe what shows up when WK is loading is 考えている - or in other words: “thinking” (in case you haven’t covered the grammar: 考える in its ている form meaning it’s a continuous action - “to think” vs “thinking”)

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You’re right! I just checked.

It’s raining, can’t go outside, stuck at home. Might as well do at bit more previewing for the rest of level 7. I just found out that kanji are unlocked by doing radicals. I thought kanji unlocked as you mastered the ones you were already studying as they seemed to come in batches.

:white_check_mark: 船「ふね」I’ve seen this one when I used to play RPG video games like Dragon Quest where you had to get the boat. So this one is already cinched I believe.

:white_check_mark: 週【しゅう】I am familiar with this one too, both in Chinese and in Japanese. So this should be ok as well.

:zap: 魚【ぎょ】I’m also familiar with this one having seen it on multiple signs outside. I only knew of 【さかな】. I’m less familiar with the reading however. I’ll need to be on the lookout for this one. The mnemonic doesn’t work for me either so this is trouble brewing.

:zap: 鳥【ちょう】I know this one but again, the reading is problematic. I’m used to 【とり】. Since I don’t really use the whole ms. Chou thing, this might be problematic as well.

:white_check_mark: 黄【き】yellow. This one is ok because I’ve associated ‘yellow’ to ‘key’(き)as in a yellow key.

:white_check_mark: 風【ふう】‘huuuu’ goes the wind in the trees.

:zap:黒【くこ】Coke is ‘black’.

I’ll need to be careful about this level because there’s ‘group’ and ‘people’ which are kind of similar.

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Day 4: 月 question. 50ish review.

I’m not getting tested on the kanji or radicals needed to unlock things so today I’m reviewing past things.

Today I’ll talk about something which has been confusing me; the readings of 月。

毎月「まいつき/まいげつ」I was about to write that this one was an exception because it used つき which from my understanding relates to the physical state of the moon as opposed to the ‘month’ time unit. But after verification, まいげつ also works as a reading so it’s not an exception as I thought.

四月「しがつ」so April (and the other months of the year) use the がつ reading. Simple enough.

今月「こんげつ」So in this case, much like for ‘every month’, we are not talking about a specific month so a pattern seems to emerge here.

先月「せんげつ」same thing for last month, we are not talking about an identified month of the year such as January, April and so forth. Same thing with 来月.

So actually there’s a pattern with an exception: 何月「なんがつ」Logically, it should be just like the other non-specific months. So what I take it from it is that 何月/なんがつ is an exception.

毎月

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One way to look at it is that 何月 acts like a placeholder for a month name. “What month contains Christmas? December contains Christmas. What month is the shortest? February is the shortest.”

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The issue is that my brain will likely to do the same thing with ‘next month’ or other non-specific month as for expressions like 来月、毎月、先月 they’re all technically placeholders for a specific month. Unless I’m misreading your explanation. I think that’s why I couldn’t understand Viking’s explanation before.

活用【かつよう】conjugation is also one which trips me up sometimes. Not really because of this on its own but because it’s mixed up with others. I sometimes mix it up with:

活気【かっき】energy
生活【せいかつ】life

I could have sworn there was a context where the reading of 活用 was simply か. Something like かよう but it wasn’t that. Anyways I can’t remember what vocabulary it was.

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I can see that being an issue. For me, I mentally view interrogative words like who, what, and when sort of in their own category, so there’s a clear separation from words like next and last. (I completely missed @VikingSchism’s post, so now I see I essentially said the same thing. Oops.)

It just shows to show how much variance there is in learning, and why it’s likely impossible to come up with a solution that works well for everyone. (On the bright side, you’re doing much better than I did with げつ vs がつ for the longest time!)

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Perhaps a way of thinking about this is with arrows?
image (excuse the presentation, I’m not an artist)
So here if you’re referencing “next month” you have an arrow from the current month to the next one, and it works similarly for other ‘relative’ phrases (including “this month”)

If you’re referencing an unknown month (“which month?”) you can picture it kind of like this:
image
So here it doesn’t really make sense to see it as going from one month to another, but instead as detached. And when someone answers which month it is, it narrows down to one arrow pointing to that specific month

I don’t know if that’ll make any more sense, I’m not great at explaining

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Not really (because 来月 to me also narrows it down to specific month in my head) BUT I appreciate you talking the time to draw a diagram and explain everything. It’s not lost. This is a public thread so people who read it can learn from it. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t make any mistakes regarding げつ/がつ in my last few reviews.

It’s interesting how every time I take the time to discuss a mistake here and reflect on it most of the time I get it right the next time.

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Hi Zizka! It’s been a while. Glad to see you’re progressing.

My way of building on this explanation would be that it’s more like you’re extracting the identifiable part of a month name and replacing it with ‘what/which’. For example, imagine that just like September, October, November and December, all month names ended in ‘-ber’. The Japanese way of asking which/what month one is referring to is

What-ber?

This is not an exception because the pattern appears elsewhere, like in 何曜日 (nan youbi=‘which day of the week?’) – every single day of the week ends in 曜日, after all.

On the other hand, when you’re referring to a month as an abstract concept, not as a proper noun with a special name (e.g. January, February, July), then the reading げつ (or more rarely, つき) is used.

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Day 5: Learning from Mistakes. 70ish review. 87%.


On day 5 of level 6 I was at 32% completion.
On day 5 of level 7 I’m at 53% which is more than 20% better!

@Jonapedia Hi! But in the case of weeks 曜日 doesn’t change its reading whether it’s 来曜日 or 何曜日. You can’t mess up because of context which can happen when you’re dealing with がつ/げつ. But either way, I’m saying this for the sake of conversation as this isn’t causeing me any trouble anymore (for now anyway).

If I compare my previous level and this one, it turns out some things are only practiced after a certain time. So there’s a limit to how fast I can finish a level. In both cases I started making progress on Kanji on day 5 even though I made a lot less mistakes on level 7 than I did on level 6.

Previewing does help. When I was introduced to the new kanji this morning I was ready for them, except for the reading of boat, せん.

:brain: I remember the word I was takinga about the other day: 作用【さよう】action. That’s the word I was confusing with 活用【かつよう】conjugation. Actually the first kanji is different so they’re not the same at all.

:dash: One thing which will sometimes confuse me are the similarities between:
申, 由 and other similar kanjis which I don’t have on hand at the moment.

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Fair enough, but the logic is the same: 曜日 is only used for names of days of the week, whereas 日 is used for days as an abstract concept. (OK, granted: 日 does turn up alone in names of holidays, but those aren’t days of the week.) No one says 来曜日, only 明日 or, if you want something that involves a reading of 日 plus something else, 翌日 (よくじつ). When talking about days, there’s a name word (曜日) that can combine with 何 to mean ‘which day of the week’, and other readings. The pattern is 何+[word/reading indicating belonging to a set of special names].

Anyway, I thought I’d just try to make the idea raised earlier a bit clearer. I’m glad that these readings aren’t causing you trouble.

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Some mistakes
:anger: 紙【かみ】unfortunate mistake, I just couldn’t remember the combination of the two radicals. Will get it next time!

:anger: 札【ふだ】I have an issue with the mnemonic for this one:

Your label fell into your food (ふだ)!

This misleads users (or at least me) to type in ふど which is more similar to ‘food’ than ふだ which is not a good thing. The thing is that there’s no single word in English or French which resembles ふだ. One thing I could do is try to think of something in two words.

:anger: 以後・以前: I need to remember that they relate to time, not space (after/before).

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Day 6: Complaining Helps! 74%, 68 Review.


image

Not much to comment this time around. I actually knocked it out of the park this morning it’s when I was reviewing the older stuff that I slipped a bit.

I need to be careful about typos because you can be at four out of five but if you mistype you go back to zero which is what I think happened at level 6.

So complaining about 札「ふだ」helped because investing emotionally about it and discussing it meant I remember it when it came up.

必ず「かならず」certain;
I decided to use French for this one as otherwise its reading is foreign:
Canard a su = the duck found out
So it’s certain that the duck found out.
This one should stick.

I often hesitate about 土星【どせい】about the reading of ど or と which is something I’ll need to be careful about.

やま・さん puzzles me at times about ふじさん. さん being the on’yomi, it would make sense to be used in Mount Fuji come to think about it while やま is the kun’yomi.

Apart from that, nothing to report.

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Day 7: A Radical Question, 70ish Review

I used to think that getting the right answer for kanjis was the surefire way to progress levelwise but I’ve realized that getting the right answer for radicals is as important since kanjis are locked until radicals are mastered.

At the moment I have one kanji left which I’ll need to practice in order to be considered as done. Since I’ve made a mistake with pig, this delays ‘home’ which is then spaced timewise in practice. So that might be the one kanji which prevents me from levelling up earlier. Sort of like what happened in the previous level.

Since radicals are used to memorize kanji, the expected answers need to be rigid. This makes sense because the radicals need to fit in the script associated with each kanji. For example, 田 requires ‘rice paddy’ which I got wrong by typing in ‘rice field’ despite the fact that the meaning is identical. This is a shortcoming which difficult to fix by design since it’s hard coded into the system so to speak. I wonder if there could be a solution to this.

Mistakes wise, I got 以下 wrong by writing いした. 下 has tons of readings so it can lead to mistakes. I’d need to read up if various on’yomi systematically fit various contexts or if it depends on the kanji.

一死【いっし】I also got wrong. I’m always tempted to write ~しん.

So that’s it for today. With practice, I’m fairly certain that I’ll discover an underlying logic to the various readings of kanjis.

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To level up you only need to Guru n-3 kanji where n is the total kanji on the level - this means that 家 shouldn’t roadblock you particularly, and you’ll get time to catch up with it while you’re on the radicals for the next level etc

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