Yeah, I learnt to write Kana by pure repetition, and with only pen and paper. No AnkiDroid, no tablet. Also, no mnemonics. It was a painful phase. (Around 10 years ago, I think.)
However, even though I very rarely write Japanese, I can pretty much always able to write Hiragana (and to lesser extent, Katakana). It helps that there are only very limited number of Kana.
There comes a conflicting thought… , that is it really bad at all to use Romaji for note taking? Using all Kana isn’t going to make it looking that much better, either.
Sometimes I use them, sometimes I don’t. I’m not a native English speaker, so some mnemonics either confuse me or I just can’t remember them, or I remember them wrong. So it’s easier to just memorise the Kanji or word itself for me or eventually come up with my own mnemonics in my mother tongue.
Usually I tend to just do my lessons without looking at the mnemonics. If I realise I’m doing the same mistakes over and over with the same words, I eventually take a closer look to the mnemonics and example sentences. It’s been working well for me so far
As long as it works for you I don’t see how there could be any problem. I opted to skip them initially because it felt easy to remember them, but I use them religiously now. I’m only on level 13 and already out of the 425 I’ve learned, so many already start to blur together. Without breaking them apart and using the mnemonics and stories WK provides (some I make myself because the WK ones are sometimes too convoluted), I think I would have a serious number of leeches.
Even if you change your mind like me, it’s not like it’s a situation of “too late”. If you decide you need them later, just look at them as you get stuff wrong, and make note of them for new lessons.
I like to use a combo of mnemonics and just memorizing the kanji. Thats what I like about wani kani, I can choose how I want to learn but its still structured. Most of the kanji I’ve learned I’ve been able to kind of build a connecting story between them, like Mrs. Chou. But for the life of my, I CANNOT remember the “(#) day” sets. Im still have like half of them in apprentice struggle is good for memory though
I didn’t mean the “rough shape”. I meant the EXACT shape. Also I have seen enough kanji through passive input that for most of the new new kanji I come across I recognized the parts/radicals it is composed of which actually aids in memorization.
If you can reliably recall the exact shape of 2000 distinct kanji without either mnemonics of some kind or vast amounts of repetition, that puts you in a very very tiny subset of the population. As a result you aren’t likely to find much advice for your situation here or elsewhere, because the rest of us are in a different and much more well-populated boat.
I hope so that it is the case. I am gonna keep going with current strat as long as I can. If I start struggling I will give mnemonics and stories a go. I have been doing lettering and illustrations for a good part of my professional career that might be part of the reason that it is working. I made this post to see if there were other people doing the same and what were their struggles as well as the ideas and thoughts of those who are against it.
I will also say that if you only care about recognition (ie reading in context) you can get quite a long way without applying the mnemonic hammer, and if/when you come back to a mnemonic based method you’ll know why you’re doing it…
At my peak, I had “learned” about 1000 kanji. At the time I didn’t really have a system or strategy. Just a lot of flash cards. The old-fashioned kind. But I didn’t retain them very well and I pretty much gave up actively learning kanji about 20 years ago until I found WK this year. I find things are clicking much better now with the help of WK’s system. Both the SRS part as well as the radicals and memorization tricks. I’m hopeful I can surpass my peak even though I’m old now.
It sounds like you may have some natural aptitude. On the other hand you haven’t proceeded that far yet either. At some point you’ll probably need to find hacks to help differentiate similar kanji.
I’ll be very surprised if you are able to memorize all of the following without resorting to some sort of mnemonics. You will start coming across all of these in your lessons here soon (and it’s a very incomplete list):
買
負
員
責
資
賀
費
質
貸
貧
貨
賛
賃
貴
貿
貢
It’s not enough to merely distinguish the differences or realize they all use the same radical. Even Japanese natives sometimes resort to mnemonics to distinguish similar characters, or to recall them without any other context.
Shouldn’t there be, what you want to improve, that you decide to return to WaniKani? Anything miswritten? Or you want to know more about Kanji meanings? Or perhaps Kanji compounds?
Listing mistakes or shames might be the best way to know how much you need WaniKani, and what you need WaniKani for.
In any case, I don’t a reason to either force or ignore mnemonics. It can be said to think longer term, will I forget? But then, effectiveness might be questionable?
It’s hard to say how you’ll do without mnemonics until you’re actually handling a sizeable number of characters.
Like, you don’t need mnemonics to remember the difference between 一 and 鬱, but it might get trickier with 未末夫失矢 etc.
As others indicated, it’s possible to go through without mnemonics. But you just can’t tell from only the first few levels, because you haven’t seen many very similar looking kanji yet.
Do whatever works for you. I was able to learn 特,時,持,寺,侍, and 待 just fine before I came across wanikani. These days, I do pay attention to mnemonics, just so I can imagine the shapes of characters in my head.
I completely ignore the mnemonics. I also don’t care about the radicals. It has been working for me so far (lvl 33 at the moment of writing this). We’ll see if it works all the way.
I use WK solely because it limits me and gives me a set path with a good SRS system.
And hey: Worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work for you, and the apprentice/guro items pile up. If so, give the mnemonics a go then.
I immediately recognized these ones. Other ones I haven’t encountered/seen/learnt yet.
buy
defeat
employee
^ These are Heisig’s RTK names for them if you are wondering.
I am never gonna confuse the ones that I just listed and I am pretty confident it will be the same for the other ones once I get to them.
The reason I came back to WK was that I realized it just made me more punctual and based on my pacing I can predict much more reliably where I will be in next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and so on.
The other thing I like is the support for English->kana input and the UI. It is so much more pleasant than Anki etc.
struggle is good for memory though