People may also leave WK to focus on specific kanji, like for the JLPT, too.
I wouldn’t consider 51 as 50 used to be the last level, so a lot of people finished there and possibly didn’t bother reaubscribing when 10 levels where added.
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Did not know that! Thanks for the information. 31 it is, unless 30 was the bar before…
When Wanikani slains the prey, what happens to their souls? Is what I want to find out.
Nah, WK started with 50 levels so there’s no other breakpoint like that.
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I knew quite a few kanji before starting wanikani, and I don’t think I’ve encountered this problem. Maybe for some radicals you have to learn a different meaning than the kanji - 又 as “stool”, when the kanji means “again” comes to mind. But for the kanji, if I already know it I just ignore the mnemonic. I also frequently create my own mnemonics if I don’t like the one given by wanikani. I’ve found over time I’m developing a better sense of which ones are unlikely to stick for me.
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You think this could happen? At what level? I’d be more than happy to drop WaniKani if I reached that level of proficiency.
Mate, I’ve been here over two years and I’m not even at that level yet. 
It’s less about Wanikani level and more about vocab in general. I’m getting better at using a monolingual dictionary but I still need to go about 4 or 5 levels deep for one definition.
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Not answering your original question, but sympathising with your own situation… I think there comes a point for everyone, where it makes more sense to only add one new lesson per burn. Otherwise the dread of too many reviews just keeps snowballing.
I know I’m at that point! In fact, I wish I had realised it a couple of levels ago - I’m not doing any more lessons until reviews become a little less dread inducing. Currently I’m doing between 200 and 275 reviews per day, but I’m aiming to keep it just under 200.
I know a couple of folks from the WK forums that started around the same time as me (so like, September, October last year) that have dropped WK for that reason.
I don’t think either of them would say that they are anywhere close to fluent yet or can use a J-J dictionary effortlessly but they’ve chosen to prioritise getting to grips with using a mono-lingual dictionary and learning vocab in that way (mainly via using the app Jalup, the beginner level of which is a crash course that covers N5 & N4 grammar, but the later levels are pretty much entirely designed around teaching you the skills to learn vocab and grammar J-J, and to be able to use a mono-lingual dictionary.)
I think, like anything, when you can switch probably just depends on how long you are willing for it to be pretty challenging for and what your priorities are!
I’m also using Jalup (though a few months behind my friends that are using it and so using a mono-lingual dictionary is still pretty hit and miss for me!) and would really reccomend it if being able to use a mono-lingual dictionary/learn Japanese in Japanese is a real goal of yours as it really guides you through it. However a) once you get to the intermediate level/once it’s teaching you things in Japanese it’s not all that compatible with WK as you probably don’t want to be covering the same stuff, and b) it’s pretty pricey (I don’t think I would have got it if I hadn’t lucked out on a discount) if you’ve already covered N5 & N4 grammar you could potentially just do the Jalup intermediate deck - which is the first J-J deck that teaches you dictionary terms etc. I think there’s also some cure dolly videos on how to switch to using monolingual dictionaries early…I must admit that I can’t deal with the voice but I imagine the content is good!
Cure dolly has great content but the voice makes it unbearable for me too! I wish someone would put the videos through some special magic deep fakey AI that would make the voice less weird.
And yeah, using a J J dictionary is not a goal or priority. It’s somethint that will come with time no matter what, I can assure you of that, but if it doesn’t happen anytime soon, I’d be glad to burn everything this website has to teach me. And then unburn all the vocab for one last big sayonara.
Heh, look at me, a level 6 pleb talking about reaching level 60. I should be more humble.
(I have a funny feeling that CD’s voice is much closer to her real voice than most people seem to think. I think she sounds quite old school and well-spoken (with some sort of Scottish accent perhaps).)
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I’ve often imaged that WaniKani has walls full of stunningly beautiful Grafana rendered data at their headquarters that us lowly durtles will never see.
I’ve also often thought that the forums can give people, especially those who may struggle from time to time, a distorted view what success should look like. Looking at all you 365 day to 60 peeps. Fortunately though, these forums are populated by a bunch of people who are always more than willing to step in with a bit of encouragement.
looks like it picks up at 51!
granted im only on the cusp of lvl 6, but WaniKani has become a part of my daily routine now, I’ve done it every single say since I started three months ago.
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I wonder, too, who drops out because they’ve gotten what they came for and don’t need to continue on. I think about this a lot because I’ve heard old timers talk about how the kanji becomes more obscure as you reach the high levels and as much I’d love to get to 60 for funsies, I wonder whether or not it will be necessary (for me in my situation anyway). It might be better for me to get half way and then switch my attention to a different aspect of the language.
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They kept tripping me up for a while while i was still learning to properly look at the radicals they were mad up of rather then trying to recognize it as a whole.
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My goal is level 30… after that, the work : reward ratio drops significantly, I heard. I just want to recognize “most” kanji but don’t mind if I have to look something up once in awhile…
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People usually talk about the 10 last levels when diminishing returns is mentioned here.
I’d love to see a chart showing the diminishing returns of the WK levels in terms of kanji frequency
At level 24 WK has covered >90% of the top 500 most common kanji
At level 36 WK has covered >90% of the top 1000 most common kanji
At level 45 WK has covered >90% of the top 1500 most common kanji
At level 60 WK has covered >80% of the top 2000 most common kanj
Isn’t it what the “Reading coverage” page of wkstats show ?
A few days ago, I looked up the kanji in two words that are relevant to my interests (one is in the name of a wrestling tag team lol and the other is in the title of a children’s anime that I enjoy), and one had level 58 kanji and the other had level 55 kanji, and honestly that alone is enough to motivate me to want to go all the way to 60, even with diminishing returns. I haven’t spent a lot of time looking up unfamiliar kanji in words that I come across, but even out of the small handful of things I’ve looked up, I’ve gotten kanji across the board in terms of WK levels. It’s definitely possible to look up kanji individually and memorize them outside of this system, but even from my limited experience, there are loads of kanji from the higher levels that I want to eventually learn. I don’t think you can entirely rely on what is or isn’t the most common, because there will be plenty of exceptions to that even just in your everyday life.
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