He said he attained an “almost native” level of Japanese reading.
“That counts as high level of understanding to me.”
Andrew.
1 Like
Man every time I hear something else it sounds like such obvious bullshit more and more.
I believe the method that RTK invented is to make ridiculous claims and not even attempt to back them up (The claim that RTK puts you on “the level of a Chinese person”)
2 Likes
The world (and youtube in general) is full of people talking crap with a confident tone of voice.
“The mnemonics are given to you instead of you been encouraged to make your own??” Bovine faecal matter. We are offered the option to create our own in the notes. So this dude hasn’t even tried the first 3 free levels. Half-assed review alert.
Someone already made a witty comment about the fact we have to pay. But to take this further, my monthly subscription for WK costs less than 3 beers where I live or a medium size pizza delivered to my house. There’s nothing wrong with being frugal but when 9bucks/7euros is too much to pay monthly, you’re a cheapskate.
It really annoys me when I hear/read complaints about learning readings. When I look at words in the languages I know or numbers generally I hear a wee voice in my head pronouncing it. Now the same thing is starting to happen with kanji. Isn’t that cool AF? That’s a native-like ability. We’re becoming Japanese 
Why is he criticizing SRS? I’m probably biased because with HouHou, WK and Anki my life has transformed into one big giant SRS task. But it works. It really does. What gripes could you possibly have against SRS other than you need to pull your finger out and do it every day?
Wanikani is a supplement to your learning. If you learn things in context at the same time using genki, anki etc you will learn faster than if you used only one approach.
14 Likes
Bookmarked.
8 Likes
He doesn’t criticize SRS, at least in my perspective. He says that we can’t modify the intervals on WK. What he fails to understand is that a newb will have no idea which intervals to choose. Damn, I personally wouldn’t try to change them either way.
3 Likes
He does. He says that WK forces you to use it’s built-in SRS. Saying that that’s a drag. around 38mins. OK, it’s not a detailed criticism but IMO saying that using an SRS is a drag is as stupid as saying that brushing your teeth is a drag. It’s indispensible so just get on with it.
3 Likes
Yeah why would you change the levels? Aren’t they set up in order of frecuency anyway?
Exactly. He wants to change the SRS intervals. He wants to change the whole 4h => 8h => 23h => etc etc to his own version. You can’t do that on WK. He actually uses Anki a lot and he’s always talking about SRSing sentences.
2 Likes
Yeah, I just jumped on the bit where he said it was a drag. To be fair SRSing sentences is a good tactic too and something I do along with WK. The main problem I have with this critique of WK is that it’s clear he hasn’t really looked at it in depth. WK’s main strong point is that it gradually gives you the power to infer meaning and take a guess at the pronunciation of unknown words, much like a Japanese child would do. It’s giving us the tools to jump into full immersion learning at a faster pace.
2 Likes
Wow, so many comments! No, didn’t read them… And only watched parts of the movie ^^;
But here is my experience;
Remembering the Kanji IS amazing, true! until you hit 5-600… I SUCK at making my own mnemonics, so what he say is a big drawback about WaniKani is actually a HUGE benefit for me! RTK wants you to make your own, WK always gives you one! You are allowed to make your own, no one is stopping you! So hey, best of both worlds 
After RTK I could recognize, even write out, several hundred Kanji, yet knew basically NO readings… So yeah, I could point and say what meaning the Kani had, not that the word had to be same meaning as we all know. WK has thought me impossibly more than RTK could. And yeah, the out of context vocab sometimes makes them harder to absorb, but I read a lot on the side, and I do notice and remember them when I find them, so it works! It really really does!
I loved RTK when I found it. But sorry, WK truly IS the improved version!
8 Likes
Does RTK even teach you how to make mnemonics? Like, making one about ducks every time you get the reading だく?
It kinda explains it, but that doesn’t help when you are bad at it =P
I ended up just making a line of the keywords, with nothing added to it, and somehow force memorized that XD
To be honest, since they don’t teach readings, it’s not that bad… but still.
RTK teach you readings in book 2, which I never got too.
I’ve flipped through it and found it confusing as heck O_o
1 Like
I like how he talks about, as a native, we see words as pictures (with the whole long wonky spelled text deal) and then goes on the say the best way to learn is to disregard readings. When I’m doing WK vocab, I’m associating sounds/meanings with pictures. Easily learned vocab for me is when the “picture” I see brings up how to say it and what it means without effort. Isn’t that the real end goal? And he also doesn’t even come up with an actually good reason on why you should learn how to write the characters. Just that Japanese people can… Dude’s just trying to flex
edit: Also, how does knowing the “meaning”/how to write these two kanji 都合 help you know, not only the reading of this word, but the meaning too.
WK takes longer and costs more $ in the end, but you get so much more out of it.
3 Likes
This. So much this. When you haven’t struggled to read something in nearly 20 years, sitting down to read in a new language and a new writing system is tough stuff.
And learning grammar with no vocab knowledge is difficult too, if I don’t have 2 words, learning how to string two words together is super inefficient, bordering on pointless.
1 Like
I am interested in how one would do that? (I did not read everything, so maybe I missed where you explained that already).
But let’s first define “learn”, so that we have no misunderstanding:
“Learned” means for me at least @WaniKani Level of Master. Master is a crucial step, because if I get something to Master, I proved that I can still remember this stuff after weeks and usually it stays up there.
The last part means “learned” for me. So if you are saying, I can learn the first 500 Kanji in two weeks, that means for me they stay in my head for months to follow.
I can only think of learning Japanese like 5 hours a day to be able to achieve that. Like someone in this thread said, this is maybe doable for some, but not for the majority of people. I do not believe it is a valid argument, if someone has this time, to conclude that all the other methods are thus inferior, because (way?) slower.
But it could be there are other, realistic methods? I would like to know!
Another point I think that misleads quite a few people, is what XY% of knowing Kanji actually mean.
If one can read/understand/get 90% of the most frequent Kanji, that means
that 1 out of 10 Kanji they do not get. A sentence could have more then that! But this is pretty goodish, eh?
Lets talk about the 75%. That means, that 1 out of 4 Kanji will not be comprehensible.
Every second word or so will not be understandable! That is a lot worse. 75% sounds huge (and is a great achievement!) but way to low to be useful (on random material in the wild, which this is about as far as I understand).
I read this complains about “useful” and “useless” words a lot. Somebody already mentioned, that “useful” might be “useless” for oneself, so it is pretty subjective. I want to bring up another point and make a bold statement:
It is useless to learn the useful words.
Let me try to explain with AJATT: EXPOSURE!
The most “useful” words (as in “most frequent”) will be the ones one constantly read (as, and everyone agrees with that, one should read, a lot, always, read) so without any SRS or ordered core deck or whatever, one should pick them up just “naturally” and absorb them. Nothing else needed.
Going with that, one should rather learn the “obscure” and “useless” words with SRS, as these are the ones one is most likely to forget.
So instead of wasting time on a core deck ordered by arbitrary relevance, one could, in case of WK, supply ones studies with the WK ordered one, to maximize the reinforcement of the learned Kanji and absorb the frequent words by reading a hell lot of stuff.
1 Like
I have something stupid about who is and isn’t allowed to wear jeans. It’s moronic and yet since I started using it, it’s worked pretty well for me…
2 Likes
I know you’re joking and everything, but I can’t help but respond. . .
Learning languages is cool! It’s great for the brain. It opens up your life to new things! Anyone who thinks it’s silly can flip burgers the rest of their life for all I care.
1 Like