Error with synonyms?


Why doesn’t this work? Am I doing something wrong?

Two reasons, really.

First, this is a radical (for helping learn kanji), rather than a kanji or a vocabulary word. So Wanikani has (arbitrarily but usefully) declared it a frog. If you’re going to use WK’s mnemonics, you have to know “frog,” as a stepping stone to help you learn other kanji.

Second, the meaning of the kanji is (according to WK, I’m no expert) “support.” That’s the meaning of the actual kanji—not something arbitrarily invented by WK.

When you put this together with another kanji, the combination can mean “branch office” or whatever, yes. But you can’t therefore presume that the kanji itself means branch. I wouldn’t guess, for example, that you could use it for a tree branch, or a branch of the family, or any other kind of branch other than a branch office.

I wouldn’t guess that this kanji means branch in any sense except that a secondary office can be called a branch office. In English, we are looking at a secondary office as a branch of the tree of the main office; in Japanese, we (apparently) look more abstractly at the second office as supporting the first. Two different names, with slightly different ideas in the mind.

I don’t know any of this for certain; I’m still in the early stages of my Japanese study. But I know from my study of other languages that you have to be very careful with extending the use of a particular vocabulary word to other contexts.

Did you add “branch, support, sustain” as one monolithic synonym? Add them one at a time.

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And, ha! My ignorance is exposed. The word can indeed mean branch in other contexts!

I stand by my hesitation to extend meanings, but in this case it apparently works.

This. You need to add each of those words as their own synonym entry. Since you didn’t enter “branch, support, sustain” as an answer, it didn’t recognize it as an answer. The same is true when WK teaches you multiple meanings to a word or kanji.

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Actually, the reverse is true - since WaniKani has the meanings stored as separate entries, if won’t recognise when you type them all. :slightly_smiling_face:

You’re right. I meant to say that. WK has them organized as comma separated entries while user synonyms are treated as separate entries. Probably would have been helpful to stick to one format to avoid these kinds of situations, eh?

Wow thanks for the help I would’ve never guessed that. I’ll have to wait till it pops up again and fix it

@LaughingLiving NP man, thanks a lot for your help and explanation :slight_smile: I know WK wants me to learn it as frog but it’s just an arbitrary association that has no meaning for me and doesn’t help me to figure out the radical so I decided that instead of learning the random associations I would give it my own or name them after the Kanji they represent. That way I can remember them easily and also helps me when I encounter the actual Kanji :slight_smile:

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You don’t have to wait until it pops up again! You can add user synonyms whenever you want by going to the radical/kanji/vocab page. It’s at the top under the name and the information/progress tabs.

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