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I always assumed that this is what is referred to as the âwhitelistâ, answers that are acceptable but not explicitly taught.
It was whitelisted after a recent discussion about the accuracy of that synonym. All items can have whitelisted (and blacklisted) meanings for a variety of reasons.
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ă€ăźăȘăč does originate from a Portuguese word that means âEnglishâ, but now it means the UK as a whole, not England.
England is ă€ăłă°ă©ăłă
English (when they use it for things like âEnglish Roomâ at school) is ă€ăłă°ăȘăă·ă„
Using ă€ăźăȘăčäșș to mean âperson from England (and not a person from the rest of the UK)â is a colloquial misapplication of it, and thus itâs accepted but not directly taught.
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In Japanese, âEnglish personâ and âBritish personâ are fairly interchangeable.
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I added a little more as you were posting.
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But thatâs not right. Just because thatâs how a word is used doesnât make it the meaning of that word.
Example:
Wicked means evil but itâs used to mean good. That doesnât mean in an English lesson the usage of good should be taught.
First learn what a word MEANS then learn its colloquial applications second. So here learn that ă€ăźăȘăčäșș means British person instead of English person.
Iâm not sure the wicked example works great, because no one can say that the meaning âgoodâ is actually wrong or represents a usage of language that is misleading or careless.
ă€ăźăȘăčäșș on the other hand, does fall into a category of words where careful specificity is relevant.
The fact that real Japanese people will make the mistake means people shouldnât be punished too harshly, but outright teaching it as âThis word means English personâ is just wrong.
I think the whitelist is the perfect solution.
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I think youâve got it backwards. How a word is used the de facto definition. Dictionaries usually lag common usage. Sometimes by decades or more.
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Wait why is this a problem? It doesnt look like you added a synonym so it took your meaning. Its like ä»ć§ being listed with a meaning of buddhist priest when it would be more correct to say buddhist monkâŠit still means the same thing though.
also kind of weird but my samsung keyboard wont pull up the kanji ă¶ăŁăă . i had to type in the individual kaniji
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Yeah I think thatâs a better analogy.
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I think for the purpose of talking about colloquial usage of words itâs an all right example.
Especially if you consider that using wicked for good would make someone sound like theyâve stepped out of a time machine from London in the 90s.
Possibly but for language learners itâs best to have the âcorrectâ âformalâ definition in place before learning colloquialisms.
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I was not aware of that association. I just know that âwickedâ with positive associations is common in Boston / Rhode Island English (having lived in those places).
e.g. âThe Sox are gonna be wicked awesome this year.â
Itâs not everyone in those areas who use it that way, but itâs commonplace even now. And people who live there and donât speak that way still know of it.
Perhaps thatâs wholly a different definition from what you were imagining.
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Okay, so weâre just talking about whether WaniKani should have a whitelist at all? Thatâs a different discussion I guess (than âshould this word be whitelistedâ), and I donât think theyâre that likely to change their minds on that.
Itâs also used for things like the old names of radicals that got changed (having one listed name for each radical is important for helping people with the mnemonics, but you donât want to punish people who learned the old names either.)
Then you would also need to include on the interface the many misspellings that are accepted like âbrtihish perpsnââŠ
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I mean, we explained that even when Japanese people do it itâs a mistake, so Iâm not sure where else there is to go with it. I gave you an example of a category of whitelisted items they will almost certainly keep, so the question then just comes down to different words, and they whitelisted this one after a very recent discussion that I linked you to, they didnât do it in a vacuum.
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If you listed every single whitelist that would be too much. So many words can have a ton of synonyms and like @zyoeru mentioner earlier it can depend on the context. This also makes it more difficult for non english natives. Seeing wicked on something like ăăă would be very confusing to non English natives and probably even to native English speakers, as @Leebo said it is regional.
I do get what you are saying but i dont know why you are pushing so much on this as your answer was still marked correct. Its not like it said British person is right and English isnât. This just feels like arguing for arguementâs sake.
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There are native speakers on the team who make WaniKani, but that doesnât seem like it should be used in favor or against to me.
Indeed.
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Ehhhhh⊠but if you are using English for British then you are making a mistake but not a mistake thatâs fatal to your language learning.
And if you ARE using English as a synonym for British please stop that because itâs actually pretty offensive.
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To answer the original question of this threadâŠ
WK accepts âEnglish Personâ as a meaning because this is a meaning WK used to teach for this vocab item. But recently they removed this meaning, as they found it to not be entirely correct (see this thread - ă€ăźăȘăčïŒ is Wanikani wrong on purpose? ). However, to not punish users who were taught this term before the update (as these users would be likely put in âEnglish Personâ as the meaning), the meaning âEnglish Personâ is kept in a hidden whitelist so that they wonât fail a review with this answer.
To summarize, my understanding of the whitelist is that itâs mostly for accepting formerly taught answers, whereas now the new listed meanings should be considered the true correct answers.
There is of course the argument that this should be considered a correct meaning regardless of if the main meaning changed, but thatâs what the user synonym list is for. I find myself often adding meanings of vocab terms that jisho.org lists for the word if WK doesnât have it listed, or if the phrasing is very specific and I enter a slightly-different but still the same meaning phrasing.
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