How do I differentiate between similar items in KaniWani?

WaniKani Requesting Help
#1

Hopefully this is the right category lol

The issue I’m having is that similar words often have almost the exact same prompt in KaniWani (and even when they don’t, they are so similar that it is still confusing). The biggest group of words I’ve been having trouble with are all the words for woman and girl. There’s like 2000000 million different versions (okay, that might be an exaggeration) and I know em all but I almost always get my KaniWani reviews wrong because I don’t know which version it is asking for. Another group I had trouble with were the two words for ‘few’, 少し and 少ない (these ones are likely my fault for not learning the subtle difference between them, though, so any explanation of them would be appreciated).

So, how do I deal with this issue? Do I just have to put up with it and press the ignore button, or is there a fancy solution somewhere? Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

Well, there’s synonyms on KW itself (which is when you set it up so two different Japanese answers are linked up so either is accepted for certain prompts) and there’s synonyms on WK (which KW pulls over and therefore allow you to add more disambiguating prompts).

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#3

Oh, both of those sound useful. My main concern with using synonyms is that I don’t want to be missing out on slightly different meanings where they might be relevant (e.g. using different words for different situations, like in the ‘few’ situation described in the OP) but I guess that won’t be very common.

#4

That’s what you can do with the WK synonyms. If you add “not sukunai” to sukoshi’s synonyms, then you know it’s not that one, or you can try to add less direct ones.

It keeps them separate without confusing them.

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#5

In some cases looking at the part of speech should help (少し vs 少ない). That won’t always be helpful, but it’s a good thing to pay attention to.

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#6

I’ve hit this problem too. I’ve added synonyms here on WK and tried to find words that would guide me to the right answer without telling exactly which one it is. That means sometimes I have to sit a while and think through all the different words I know for a specific term (like girl) while doing KW reviews to see which ones I can eliminate. On the other hand, eventually I want my brain to be able to offer up all the words for girl so I can pick the right one for the situation I’m in.

For example, I added “father (formal)” to お父さん so I could differentiate that from 父, although it can be used casually (as far as I know). However お and さん indicate formality. This way I practice both お父さん and 父 and don’t just put it in the same one each time.

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#7

I created a small script that shows you a blurred version of the expected answer, you can at least guess how long it should be, and where the kanji and kana are.

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#8

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