So as most people would know, I assume, is that sadly WaniKani is limited in how much I-we could learn Kanji. Now while I am still quite new in indulging in this endeavor of being humbled by The Great Crabigator, I would like to know for future reference if there is any (online/physical) place I and other people could continue their studying of Kanji beyond WaniKani. In other words, I’m a newb already planning to learn and read Japanese novels completely made of up Kanji and I think it would be helpful for those of us who are hungry for more extensive vocab
Koichi likes to stress that you should start reading a lot when you get to level 10. I’ve changed the language on my phone and laptop to Japanese. It’s a little difficult sometimes, but knowing katakana gets you a long way.
Once you’ve finished WaniKani, I would suggest that you just keep reading and using Japanese daily, when you come across kanji and vocab you don’t know, you can add them to HouHou or Anki. That way you get the benefits of WaniKani anyway.
Usually the reason you want to learn Japanese will give you things to read about, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble finding reading material.
I would suggest finding how something you’re interested is refered to in Japanese and searching for that on Google.jp.
Actually if you complete all 60 levels, it will cover up almost 2136 standard Joyo Kanjis and that’s what most Japanese people write in books. Just find the missing kanjis in the list (probably just 100-200 that are not included in WK)
It’s true that they also use Kanji outside the list but they must provide its reading and sometimes the meaning. So you don’t have to worry about that.
By the way, if you reach level 60, I assume you become an advanced learner by then. Then, I recommend you to buy a kanji dictionary to study more if you want to.
I’d say walk that bridge when you come to it. I don’t know how fast it’s possible to learn everything on WK, but it’ll at least take you a year, and for most people it takes much longer. If you think to much about what you’ll do after you’re done with WK, chances are you’ll never complete it at all. My advice is to make sure to set goals you can handle and take it one step at a time. And don’t forget you have to learn grammar as well, assuming you haven’t yet, which I suggest you do outside of WK.
Outside of WK I learn most of my kanji from what I find organically reading other materials. Generally I’ll find something I don’t know, look it up on jisho.org and add it to the list of terms on a word document for whatever I’m trying to translate. If the kanji/word comes up frequently enough I’ll add it to set a of Anki decks.
However, I’ve stopped drilling new terms now since WK eats up a lot of my energy. Most of the regular terms and kanji are covered in WK so I’ll get to it eventually and regular exposure via reading goes a long way towards learning new kanji/vocab.
Kanji alone isn’t going to get you anywhere though - you need to learn actual words (vocabulary and phrases) and study grammar outside of wanikani. Wanikani teaches you the kanji and common words related to them (which will take you at least a year to go through) so you just have to find another resource to back up your grammar.
This is super legit. Level 1 is way too early to be worrying about this unless you are burning through the levels at the fastest possible pace and even then still kind of early
Search the forums for HouHou.
A great WK-like Dictionary App for Windows 7+ and Linux, I believe. I’m using it currently for some vocabulary in my light novels. Doesn’t have lessons or mnemonics, but defines both kanji and vocabulary, and then you can add them to the SRS system. : D
It’s great, and was designed by one of the members here.
I understood the original post a bit differently I think. Sounds to me like you’re looking for ways of learning more kanji right now and not later on in your WK journey… I remember the frustration of being level 1-3 and being like, damn I want all the kanji now! But really, if you’ve got more time to spend on other Japanese learning, go for grammar, reading or speaking practice in other ways.
If you’re moving through WK at about 3-4 levels per month you’ll learn over 100 kanji each month, personally I think that’s plenty. There’s loads of people who want to do more than that but I’d guess that they either burn out or don’t properly get what they learn to stick in long-term memory. If you start doing some targeted reading practice you’ll end up picking up new kanji through that and it’ll have a much greater impact!
