I recently started using WaniKani and i’m already starting to see some amazing progress! There is just one thing that i’m slightly worried/stressed about. I can’t help but feel like the Kanji that I have learned up to now will be forgotten once I get to a higher level. I wanted to ask the community about their experiences with remembering Kanji after some time has passed since learning it. Do you guys find you forget a lot of the material that you previously knew?
Side note: I see that there are multiple levels above Guru (Master, Enlightened, Burned). Does this mean that older Kanji (AKA the Kanji I learned a while ago) will eventually pop up in my reviews again? If so this gives me some piece of mind.
The kanji will show up again in your reviews until you burn them. After guru, it takes 2 weeks to Master, 1 month to Enlightened, and an additional 4 months until you burn them, and then you won’t have to review them again on WaniKani. The kanji also get reinforced by the vocabulary you learn here.
After you burn the kanji, if you never see them again by reading Japanese or seeing them otherwise, you will probably forget them eventually, especially the less frequent and more complicated ones.
But in the earlier levels, basically all the kanji are really common and frequently used, so if you engage with the language on a regular basis, you will probably see them often enough to not forget them.
And you will occasionally forget things. That is to be expected. In the course of that happening, you’ll just get more reviews more often until it solidifies again. It’s all part of the SRS process.
I’d like to add that a lot of kanji reappears in future levels as radicals for future kanji or inside vocab.
So even once you burn something you’ll still run into them in other ways that helps make sure you don’t forget them.
I forget words all the time in English, but I can use the language and read in English… sometimes I have to use a dictionary, in all the languages I know. Don’t worry so much! Just stick to doing your reviews and find ways to use Japanese afterwards to not forget everything.
You might want to look for reading material or get exposure to the many fonts that japanese could use so you can further your kanji recognition. You might want to try reddit.com/r/japaneseinthewild, which I do believe has a few posts every day.
