I am on level 16 right now. I am finding that I simply cannot find a way to consistently remember the differences between some pairs of words that have similar looking kanji, pronunciations, or meanings. There are some words and kanji that I have been struggling with for almost a year now, and I am still consistently confusing them. Does anyone have any tips for cracking out of the cycle with the ones that trip you up? I find that once some of the ones that I continually screw up on are always falling back to acquaintance, the SRS process doesnāt really seem to help anymore with learning them. What other tools do you recommend for these ones? Thanks!!
Itās definitely tough, and itās definitely something that everyone can relate to. Lately å, ę·, and åÆ have been absolutely kicking my butt.
Iāve had a few things work for me:
Kanji: Come up with a mnemonic specifically targeting the difference between the characters
Vocab: Encounter it in the wild and use that sentence/word to cement which is which
Radicals: Mark as correct and move on, Iām not here to learn WKās radical names
What are some of the pairs that youāre having trouble with? Itās likely that someone has had issues with the same pairs before and can give you a hand
I donāt deal with them. They donāt get any extra attention.
Between textbook work, listening, reading, recall, grammar, etc., there are plenty of better ways to spend my time. I canāt afford to keep wasting time on ~50 leeches.
By focusing on the above methods, leeches will show up in context, which aids greatly in memorization. å ·å used to be a leech until I saw it once in context.
So, I just ignore them, and they work themselves out eventually.
You can either use scripts to do some extra cramming to help the leeches move up the SRS-ladder - or just ignore these items for now. Especially early on (up to lv 30-ish or so), thatās a possibility - especially if they arenāt that many to begin with.
But, as you get more and more items from each level that turns out to be harder to memorize than the rest, trying to get rid of them is understandable and what I tried to do myself.
You can defo make a dent in the amount of items that jump between Guru and Apprentice and clog up reviews if you want to. For tips, check out my study blog where Iāve got a list in the OP post with scripts that help (and just checking out posts for more methods Iāve tried over the years).
For me using the words in sentence context was a solid way to remember them. Sometimes just recognizing them wouldnāt give enough of a stimulus for them to stay in my memory.
For Kana and pronunciation, hopefully Iāll hear them one day; but if thatās unreliable ā indeed, mnemonics. I might create or revise mnemonics sometimes. The point isnāt a strong mnemonic or not, but rather ājust worksā. and there is that audio UserScript
For meaning, just read more about the vocabulary and example sentences. Maybe go deep into vocabulary explanations (Google? A good dictionary?). Still, nothing really replaces real experience. User synonyms or cheating, if need be.
For Kanji usage, maybe mnemonics. Actually, sometimes the default Kanji meaning isnāt enough ā there are sometimes multiple Kanji meanings. Kanji can be looked up too. (Goo, Weblio, Wiktionary)
About SRS and flashcards, there is an option to do flashcards without SRS, e.g. Self-Study.
I may add to Anki, if itās about meaning. Anki has Reset progress and Set due date. Also with more freedom in adding explanations and context sentences. Yomichan works in WaniKani website.
When I have two kanji that I keep mistaking, I write them down side by side on a little paper and stare at them for a while. Iāll try to put that paper in a place that I see often.
I also do that same trick for general leeches, the kanji that I can never seem to get right, I draw them again and put them where Iām sure to think about it often.
Lately Iāve been struggling with ē§ and ę. I have not failed it since writing them down.
It is what I ended up coming up with yea.
My issue come from the fact that āGrainā and āRiceā are so close to each other conceptually.
When I learned ē§ I already knew the word ęē and assumed it was that first part. Wrong knowledge but it got stuck in my head for a long time.
Iām good nowadays
Sometimes it helps to come up with an alternative mnemonic, because thatās whatās not sticking. Or, one specifically meant to differentiate them if Iām mixing two up. Synonyms help for some, tooāI often find that itās the English word they chose that Iām not remembering even though I know conceptually what the kanji means, and choosing a word I use more often to manually add as a synonym helps.
Question: ā¦ about seeing them in context.
What do you use for that ? I got āCommon Japanese Collocationsā by Kakuko Shoji which is word pairings that are regularly used. Not quite idioms; more āhe gets so carried awayā i.e. natural language about uhā¦hair, visit, chairā¦ no index but grouped by topic so just kinda random to find the word youāre actually looking for ā¦ getting in some extra reading practice meanwhile.
Iām considering āJapanese Core Words & Phrases: Things You Canāt Find in a Dictionary.ā And there are plenty of sample phrases & sentences in the Furigana J-E dictionary.
So, are these the kinds of sources you folks in the WK community use to find the āslug/leechā in context? Any sites?
K
jpdb.io also allows you to search specific words through their database and get a list of anime/manga/novels that contain that word. Iāve usually searched through that list of media for something that seems familiar to me and then tried to find the use of that word in context. Unfortunately jpdb doesnāt make this easy for you since for multi-episode series, the site wonāt let you search for which episode the word was used in so you have to check each episodeās list individually.
Though for actual memorization, the best effects will come from finding the word completely organically while youāre reading. Which is just dumb luck I guess but the BaaderāMeinhof phenomenon will strike you much more than youād expect if you read as much as you can
I donāt look for it in context, I just read manga/books/etc and see what I come across. So if I happen to come across a word when Iām reading, obviously I needed to know it for that material. But if it never comes up when Iām reading, I didnāt really need it at that moment so Iām ok with it being a leech.
