I think it might not be that bad. More levels just mean that people paying for it monthly/yearly will stay for longer
There is an Anki deck that digs into Kanji not provided by WaniKani if you want to give that a try.
[WKnai]
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Or not. Many people would opt to learn the rest from native material, myself included. In terms of progressing your studies, that would be the better option.
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Why not? Of course learning it from native material is nice, but I must say at my current english level I would really enjoy a resource to learn very uncommon vocab that natives still usually know.
Because people at that level have the option to read. Far less people would want to learn very uncommon kanji/words out of context rather than focusing on the rest of their studies. WK doesnât even cover half of the core 10k so there is that on top of grammar.
Now if both of those are caught up to the level your kanji knowledge is at, its still not worth it. When you say âuncommon vocab that natives still usually knowâ, Iâm not you realize just how many words that really is. Its a lot. To try and learn any decent number of them off of a list is going to be inefficient. You are much better just learning the ones that apply, which consuming native material will automatically pick out for you. Those âuncommon wordsâ can suddenly become extremely common in certain contexts depending on what you are reading. For you, learning æŸèȘČćŸ may be near useless, but I have seen it probably close to 50 times in the last month alone. Rather than learning words in the order someone else tells you to, past a certain level you need to take the initiative and figure out what applies to you and what doesnât. Some things are more worth your time than others. Reading/talking to natives will make those things obvious.
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You underestimate how fast you can learn at this level. Just writing out those words I donât know yet. Thatâs what I was doing. Here an excerpt from my list:
Summary
derision - Hohn, Spot
clam - verschlossener Mensch [fig]
to scurry around - umherhuschen
dowry - Mitgift
mist - Nebel, Dunst, SprĂŒhregen
to ladle sth - etwas schöpfen (z.B. Suppe)
to ladle - ausschöpfen
ladle - Schöpflöffel, Suppenkelle
to conjure - etwas beschwören, zaubern, Hexen
to conjure up - herzaubern, hervorzaubern
semigloss - seidenmatt, halbglanz
alienated - zweckentfremdet
to soothe - besÀnftigen, lindern
to loiter - bummeln, trödeln, lungern
to droop - herabhÀngen
connotation - Beiklang, Assoziation, Nebenbedeutung
to dangle - baumeln, herabhÀngen
to putrefy - verwesen, verfaulen, vermodern
coercion - Nötigung, Zwang
to bestow - schenken, erweisen, verleihen
to beckon - herbeiwinken
to bellow - brĂŒllen, heulen, grölen
dimwit [coll] - Blödmann, Schwachkopf
veneer - Fassade [Fig.], Anstrich, schöner Schein [Fig.]
ambidextrous - beidhÀndig
immaculate - makellos, einwandfrei, fehlerfrei, rein
skew - schief, schrÀg
eventide - Abendzeit
abyss - Abgrund, Hölle, Grund
to cavort - herumtollen, tollen, toben
hulk - Klotz
to plane - hobeln, glatten
shale - Schiefer
ravenous - heiĂhungrig, gefrĂig, ausgehungert
keg - FĂ€sschen
breakwater - Wellenbrecher, Hafendamm, Buhne
accretion - Amlagerung
deed - Tat, Akt, Handlung
to revere - verehren
mache - Feldsalat
Lingonberry - Preiselbeere
courtesy - Zuvorkommenheit, GefÀlligkeit, Höflichkeit
to go astray - auf Irrwege geraten
to posit - postulieren
innateness - Angeborensein
husbanding - sparsamer Umgang
premonition - Vorahnung
to conceive - entwerfen, konzipieren
to weave - weben, torkeln, erfinden
to delve - forschen, graben
lodgings - Unterkunft
stout - korpulent, krÀftig, stabil
plow - Pflug
to plow - ackern, pflĂŒgen
to entomb - beisetzen
ere [archaic] - ehe, bevor
damp - feucht
to squint - schielen
to amend - abÀndern, berichtigen
Geez [coll] - oje
Wind chime - Windspiel
I mean, youâre free to do whatever your want. But theres a reason theres practically 0 demand for anki decks of the 10k-20k most common words.
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Good idea that. Just recently discovered houhou. Itâs an excellent reading practice companion.
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(god Iâd love a 10k-20k deck⊠Sorry, didnât mean to interrupt. Please carry on)
I used to be at level 30+ but reset my level recently, and Iâve been studying Japanese on and off for quite a couple of years now. But tbh, I usually just want more than I can chew haha
I mean, thats ight, its just that usually people learn the most common 10k words before learning the next 10kâŠ
âŠI think I might have the wrong idea about the XXk decks, now that you say that⊠I always thought a (letâs say) 20k deck contains everything from most common word #1 - most common word #20k
Basically, I thought itâs just one neat big package? So I always thought âwhy study the 6k deck when I will get those words + more in a 10k deckâ - because I certainly got a lot of basic words in my 10k deck. Now Iâm confusedâŠ
Yeah, but we were specifically talking about uncommon words. What I was referring to was a deck that would contain the 10000th most common word all the way to the 20000th most common word. The best way I could think to describe that was â10k-20kâ.
Ahh I see, then I misunderstood that. I thought it was 10k OR 20k deck. Sorry about butting in~
Haha, its a forum. You really donât have to apologize for giving your opinion/talking.
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Haha yeahhh I know, but still lol
The side argument over the 0.01% thing, the number of level 60 people, etc. neglects that a number of level 60 people may not even pay to continue because, given that you can read relatively well by the time you get to level 60 (provided youâve kept up on grammar, vocab, idioms, etc.), you have native speaker vocab- and kanji-building resources available to you as well that donât require you to translate, and thus are a better use of your time than WK.
To illustrate my point, Iâm a native English speaker, and I have an app that shows me weird words I would otherwise probably not find, because I like weird vocab. When I get to level 60, I would probably consider finding a similar thing for Japanese. As far as the benefit of omitting translation: translation trades complexity for ease (e.g. a translation dictionary will typically render the Spanish words âhablante,â âponente,â âconferenciante,â etc. as âspeakerâ in English, ignoring that they all have different registers and uses). When I make Anki cards in Spanish, theyâre all in Spanish at this point because the nuances are more important to me than just knowing a translation.
The point Iâm trying to make by this is that WaniKani aims to get you to literacy via kanji knowledge. Once you get to literacy, spending more time on a translation-based site learning words/kanji from lower on the frequency list is actually a worse usage of the userâs time (in addition to a lot of work for the WK staff). Thatâs not to say that new levels wouldnât be fun, but the amount of time spent to get items to Guru, even, would be better spent using existing materials that donât rely on the crutch of translation (I can guarantee that all the words WK translates as âactionâ are not used the same, and that it will eventually become important to know these differences), or learning more specialized vocab (for example, I know a lot of obscure linguistic words in Spanish, but I donât know a lot of more-common-but-still-not-very-common sports words because I donât give a shit, and a resource that tried to teach said words to me just because theyâre within, say, the 10,000 most common words would be wasting my time).
Incidentally, if youâre interested in the topic of the things that donât get translated between languages, Iâd highly recommend reading A.L. Beckerâs introduction to the book Beyond Translation, if you can get a hand on it.
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I think what @Vanilla and you are trying to stab at two sides of the same coin. You want to supplement words that arenât very common to happen upon, but many native speakers know about, right? I understand this quite well because it brings you closer to being more like a native speaker. I believe Vanilla, on the other hand, is saying that at a high level of proficiency learning vocabulary in a vacuum is only going to increase your chances of using that vocabulary _wrong_because donât know how it supposed to be used. So in order to see the contexts these words are used in, it best to discover them in use rather than clutter your mind with words that donât have any context attached to them at all.
In an extreme example, itâs almost like an middle-aged person trying to learn teenage slang from reading a list of words from the Urban Dictionary and subsequently starts using those words with middle-aged peers.
You probably never run into this problem yourself, but errors in oneâs communicative competence (knowing how to say to what to whom, but also knowing where itâs being used and why) are often committed because the learner never learned the proper context of the words or phrases they misused. For this reason, itâs better learn new concepts in context when one is able to. Thatâs why we often see countless threads of people complaining that WK is teaching them âuselessâ vocabulary because those individuals 1) didnât learn the vocabulary in context (and no, WK context sentences arenât a sufficient substitute for learning in context), and 2) they never took a second to realize that dropping a word they learned from a kanji reading website may not have any mileage outside of written language because they lack communicative competence in Japanese.
Thatâs my two cents. Do whatever you think works best for you, though.
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I think you guys overthink too much about using words in the wrong context. Yeah, itâs bad but isnât making mistakes the basis of learning anything? The problem is how you react to your mistakes, not the fact that you make them.
I could go on and discuss about all the variables that should be taken into account to maximize learning efficiency, but letâs not. In Japanese, I think the best solution is just to do the Core 10k and add words you see being used in native content to the SRS system. Thatâs it. Thatâs how you get to be âfluentâ as soon as possible. Donât forget EN => JP PLEASE! I feel like a lot of people undervalue this. English is not my native language, so I got to experience how important the âlanguage you know => language you wanna knowâ step is important. I know the meaning of a lot of words in English that I probably would never remember going PT => EN. Sometimes I even have to google basic words. Why? Simply because I got way more exposure to listening/reading than speaking/writing. This gets even worse when youâre not living in the country that uses the language youâre learning.
Read a lot, write a lot, listen to a lot and talk a lot.
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