I’m learning both Japanese and French, and in terms of sheer vocabulary building nothing comes close to WaniKani in my resources for either language. It had me wondering if anyone found any similar programs in terms of vocab building effectiveness not only for French but any other language?
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Take a look at Glossika
Incidentally, I’m learning French too, and I used Morphman and subs2srs to learn vocab from French Netflix shows.
I found this was a quite efficient way to get a grasp of the most common words, especially the ones that don’t really make sense to study as separate vocab (all the “connective tissue” of the language such as pronouns or prepositions).
What I’m doing right now is analog though: a sort of mutant amalgamation of this and the goldlist method. Instead of using Anki I go through French material and write down by hand sentences I don’t understand along with translations.
I start each session with going through what I wrote down at least two weeks ago, scratching anything I still understand and writing the unknown sentences into today’s list until I have a certain number (I’m going with five).
As an aside, I’ve never been super into either anime or manga, but when I grew up with French and Belgian comics, so I’m having a lot of fun working through Tintin in French this way 
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Anki?
Just curious what are you already using for French? Im assuming that SRS vocabulary tool would be sufficient since the volume of words required would be less, especially for native speakers of other European languages.
I think Kitsun has goal of making their system applicable for many languages and subjects.
I don’t think you need something like Wanikani for languages like French. Japanese is a language where learning the alphabet takes like 3 years, whereas for French you have maybe 10 special characters. Wanikani is there to teach you how to read, not so much vocab words, but that’s not necessary for languages based on the latin alphabet.
I’d suggest just using Anki with flashcards, but if you REALLY want the WK approach, you could make syllable flashcards as a subtitute for Kanji cards. For example, in French, “ai” can be pronounced either “ay” or “eh”. Then you can add specific words to help remember both pronunciations (like “aimai” 
)
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I agree with you but nevertheless, his question is very interesting for let’s say, Chinese ? (and probably other languages that can’t think of right now)
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This is true but I think a lot of WaniKani features would still help for other languages. For example the mnemonics are great. I’ve since been trying to make clever mnemonics for French words I keep forgetting. Also there is something about the gamification elements I really like. Anki doesn’t really feel as “fun” and compulsive even though I still do my decks every day. It feels more like homework where WaniKani feels like something I can’t wsit to do.
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I would love to see a version for Chinese. I learned enough Mandarin to get by on a trip to China about ten years ago, but I’m planning to get back to it in a couple of years after I’m comfortable with my Japanese.
I’m also learning French and Japanese at the same time and I find French classes to be the best part of my studies and where I learn the most, although I get not everyone has that luxury. I also use Duolingo and a grammar book I occasionally do exercises on; however class is where things click for me the most.
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