Humanity? Human Nature? Instinct? Heart’s Request like a million times? 2 or 3 Kanjis for the same concept twice? I’ve been Level 15 for a week now, and I’m barely finishing the leftover vocab from Level 14.
I’m not saying it’s impossible or anything, really I’m just venting about how this has been the single hardest level for me. (At least yet because Japanese is veeery fun) My average review rate has been something like 75%, when usually I’m around 89%-93%.
Sorry for whining. Just letting off some steam towards people who would understand.
Brace yourself, it doesn’t get much easier. Only from those I’ve learned so far, 検, 険, 験 all pronounced けん and share the same right radical. As a bonus there’s 2 more similar kanji later down the line I haven’t learned as well, sharing the same reading too 剣, 倹
I’ve recently got these all coming up for review, and I realized my strategy of just guessing wasn’t very effective, so using or coming up with strong mnemonics for the left radical really helps.
Understanding how the phonetic components work changed how I learned kanji, I think your strategy is a good answer. Realizing that the right part 僉 may not mean anything but “read me けん” helps to focus on the important part. For example 験 I remember a relevant word 試験 and that when you buy something valuable like a horse 馬 (imagine ancient China here) you need to test it thoroughly (also see “never look a gift horse in the mouth” )
Regarding Ken and his beloved squid… It’s all about Ken making sure that his squid lives a happy life.
験: Ken is thinking about replacing his squid with a horse, but before he can do so, he wants to test the horse out to see if it can do everything a squid can.
検: Ken is thinking about building a new home for the squid in this tree. Ken examines the tree thoroughly but decides it’s not good enough for his squid.
険: Ken is thinking about going to the butcher’s… but it’s too risky for his squid. After what happened last time, Ken isn’t going to risk going to the butcher with his squid.
To be fair, those are all kanji with pretty grounded, practical compounds. 職場、職員、検査、審判…
Those are all words you hear, with a decent level of practicality. I’ve definitely found that the practicality of the vocab and kanji in the 20s seems to outstrip that of the teens. (Which isn’t WK’s fault; it’s just the vocab that opens up with increasingly complex kanji.)
Re: thread: I think I still have more hangers-on from level 14 than any other level.
The problem is trying to distinguish between them. It’s fine if you read them plenty in context. However, getting confused words like (就職) (職業), and (就業) is pretty easy.
職業 seems sufficiently different, since it’s more a synonym for 仕事 than the other two, but you’re right, telling the others apart can be rough and they’re more abstract. (I haven’t hit 就 on WK myself yet, but I know it from other vocab materials.)
