Some sure are but getting a burn item kicked back to guru just because I punched in a typo in the Hiragana while quickly pushing through a lot of reviews … ugh.
Kani-Wani has the option to correct typos or mark kanji as false even if you input the correct reading (e.g.: when I did write it incorrectly or didn’t remember it’s shape). WK should allow that too. Natively. I don’t use any scripts except dark mode, so usually I take the kick in the groin like a man when I mistype. :'D
As for the synonyms: as a non English speaker, sometimes it’s not my JP that trips me up but rather my EN. Learning a foreign language in another foreign language is kinda bonkers to begin with.
I feel you. My personal bugaboos that just never quite click (I get them to Master and then they tumble down again, over and over like Sisyphus) are all the weirder words for “naturally”, “origin(ally)”, and “anticipate”. (And yes, sometimes those overlap, which is extra fun!)
There are many annoying words that are near impossible to differentiate when you are only given the EN meaning. Somewhere down in the 4th meaning there is a difference… wooo! …
Yep! Like Skritter asking you to write “the” two-character word for “soon”. Don’t ask for the reading or the first stroke or you’ll get dinged for not just knowing it! A couple days ago it asked me for three two-character “soon”s in a row—at least i was starting to narrow them down by the last one…
I have worked out how to remove one of my major leeches NANGATSU vs. SENGETSU though - the 2nd vowel is the same!!! Hope that pattern continues (probably not lol)
That specific example makes me think that trying to sort out these types of synonyms in WK isn’t a useful endeavor. Like, there’s a subtle difference between 旅行 and 旅, but not in any way that matters if you aren’t trying to write poetry. Just know that they’re both words for “trip” and you’ll do fine. For that matter, I think everyone here learns sooner later that you don’t randomly bust out vocab that you learned on WK, so leave the subtle distinctions to practical experience.
It should allow you to retype the thingio typos where e.g. you type KE instead of GE but only if the dakuten/hakuten is shown to you and not hidden as part of the Kanji, if you know what I mean. Same with typing RI instead of RU when it’s clearly shown what you should type and you make a typo.
I agree with that, but since I’m not in school anymore, I don’t think I’ve seen any other obvious opportunity to somewhat-methodically study various “kanji + okurigana1 vs. kanji + okurigana2, 3, etc.” verbs. If you know a better source I’m all ears. Especially when you don’t know if you have godan or ichidan or what, it can be really hard to tease apart what’s the verb vs. what’s the conjugation in speech. At least in kanji study, you do have some hope of trying to figure out, like, if a -せる is a passive of a godan or an entirely separate verb….
Hah, random OT: ChatGPT swore to me the other day that it had a rule about something or other that depended on whether a kanji “had dakuten or not”. It did not mean “did the reading have dakuten”—it was insisting you could slap dakuten on kanji themselves. I asked it to demonstrate, and it did—with romaji! And then it told me the romaji could be considered kanji — “in casual or friendly contexts”!
Oh, did any of us suspect that our new overlords would be, above all else, BS artists?
Never have been more grateful to have Anki as my primary source of learning with WK as a secondary. Actually embarrassing update to have rolled out, its almost like they have no people checking anything and as soon as this was “useable” they said yep lets roll it out to everyone.
At least in kanji study, you do have some hope of trying to figure out, like, if a -せる is a passive of a godan or an entirely separate verb….
Nah, I’m stuck there with you on that whole transitive/intransitive business.
I was thinking more along the lines of those words like “wealth” vs. “fortune”, or “lie” vs. “deceive.” I’m like, are these differences really important? In a way, yes, but in the context of what I can get out of this app, then no.
Well, when I was in the most brain-foggy depths of Covid last month I had a couple days where I was consistently swapping around the “tsunami”, “fingers”, “dirt” and “loiter” enclosures (like for 池 and 地 or 役 and 投). If I hadn’t had undo then, I would’ve probably managed to reverse levels… I did actually still know the kanji and was remembering the readings and meanings and compounds, I was just not seeing the left-hand bits clearly. But it was just a weird visual-cognition glitch those three days; the vocab I learned then I still have just fine now that the brain-fog’s gone (I have no trouble remembering which of those bits go with which kanji even though when I first learned them it just wasn’t clicking).
Not that depths-of-Covid is an important use case, either! But it was nice…
What I would personally do is not use Wanikani at all however that is unrelated to this update and only related to my own study preferences.
I have no idea what your experience with Japanese is or your skill level so it is very hard to give specific suggestions. Based on your Wanikani level and the things you’ve mentioned in this thread it seems that you’re probably still a beginner. My general advice for beginners in relation to the topic of nuance, transitivity, etc is just to engage with more Japanese. Doubly so if it is a hobby and you live outside of Japan. However, it is clear in this thread that you probably wouldn’t be happy just waiting for these things to sink it via pure exposure so in your case I’d probably suggest making a very specific Anki deck and doing a custom study of the whole deck daily until you’re happy. Review every card in the deck until you get them all right. Remove cards when they feel trivial. I suggest doing this for anything that you want to cram, not just verb pairs. Don’t make the deck too big and keep the cards as simple as possible - just forcing recall of things that are generally “tip of the tongue”. I have done this for vocabulary that was actually essential for my daily life in the past and it works well.
I do, however, think this is unnecessary in general as just pure exposure and conversation (if you’re at that level) is more than enough. My general advice (which I think you won’t like based on this thread) is to not sweat the small stuff when doing SRS and just use the language more.
Yeah, back to the subject at hand, I do see the value of that extension even if I’m not personally using it. Pretty sure the author will fix it eventually, it’s just that the rollout wasn’t very well communicated. They kind of assumed everyone who had a plugin was hanging out in the forums, and some developers didn’t find out until people started complaining that their plugin was broken.
Assuming they don’t roll back, it should be a temporary thing. I’m still really hoping for a rollback though.
Well, I’m an odd duck, I studied Japanese in college for four years including three summers but it was a speaking-and-romaji-only program (don’t ask, we had a very weird head of East Asian Languages department chair who had really dumb ideas about how to learn languages). I tried to teach myself to read some (but I only had college-library textbooks so I learned the kana and the first 200 or so Jōyō in order, which was pretty useless). But now I’ve had hearing loss so getting back to it has been very difficult, and kanji seemed like a way to start training a different part of my brain. Like, at least once a week I realize at the Guru II or Master level “oh, this is that word I’ve known for 20 years…” So yeah, I’m not sure I fit any good pigeonhole, just a weird case.
You don’t. That’s why I said it’s not a perfect workaround. But if you can just accept the fact that it’s going to get spaced out, you’ll realize that it’s actually not such a big deal in the long run.
Yep. Or you can just wait a couple days until the script you’re using gets fixed. I’m only responding because you originally said there was no workaround at all. But I happen to know that that is not true, because I personally use this workaround all the time. You yourself may not be willing to put up with the downside – or you might, I don’t know – but to say that there is no workaround is just an incorrect statement.
You’re right. I’m not saying that. I don’t do that. I just remember which words give me consistent problems – which is not difficult at all, because when they come up in review again, I immediately recognize, “Argh, it’s one of these ones again. I can’t remember whether it’s transitive or intransitive… again! How the heck did it get this far in the SRS? Oh, right, I must have accidentally answered it right. Maybe I should add a different user synonym, or focus on one of the other alternative answers. In any case, I need to study this one more, so I’ll intentionally give a wrong answer to plop it down a notch.”
Hey, what can I say? This is literally an app to help you ‘memorize the answers before the test’ (or, more accurately, to learn to recognize and be able to produce kanji meanings and readings).
Our brains are exceptionally good at this task. All they need is enough practice, and you will learn it (whatever ‘it’ is). Well, that’s not the entire story of course. For the case of WK, it helps if you use things like alternative meanings or user synonyms. And also do some studying of the words themselves to try to understand their nuances, and perhaps come up with better mnemonics (i.e. that work better for you) to help you make the distinctions clearer in your mind. There are editable notes you can add to any item. I also use those all the time.
And, like I said, this is just a workaround. You said there wasn’t any workaround. That’s not true. There is. You may not like it, it may not suit you, but it does exist, and it does work. I use it all the time. You could use it too, very probably. But if you really don’t want to, no skin off my back. Just wait for your script to get fixed, and you’re off to the races. No biggie.
I have no idea what Skritter is. But anyway.
For ‘reverse WaniKani’ (i.e. producing kana/kanji from English clues), I use the app KaniWani, which uses the WaniKani API to sync your progress in WK to its own level-progression. It also syncs any user-synonyms you’ve entered into WK, and it will show you these during its quizzes.
So, specifically for the cases of the words you mentioned, I’ve also been frustrated by the ‘soon’ plethora of synonyms. Therefore, I went into the WK pages for these various words and added synonyms that ‘disambiguate’ them, when the default WK alternatives weren’t sufficient.
For example, for 間もなく I added no less than 7 synonyms, just to help me disambiguate on KaniWani: In A Short Time, In A Little While, In No Time, No Time, No Time To, Not Even A Moment, Not A Moment.
On WK, I’ll still just answer ‘soon’ when I see 間もなく, but on KaniWani, seeing these multiple variations reminds me of a similar expression 間に合う, which had previously associated in my mind a connection between 間 – which usually means something like ‘interval’ – with the idea of a ‘moment’ ‘in time’ (to be ‘in time’ for), so I came up with these variations which evoke ‘not even a moment’, which is the most literal version to 間もなく, moment-even-not-existing.
And as for 近々, I added my own user synonym: In The Near Future, and Near Future. I even suggested to the WK staff to consider changing it to something like one of these, and indeed they actually did change it from its previous primary meaning, which I think was ‘Soon’, to ‘In The Near Future’. I made the suggestion because at least it makes a semantic connection between the kanji 近, which means ‘near’, to the ‘nearness’ of the ‘soonness’, with a natural English analog. But before they actually made the change, I had been using my own synonym for a while, to help me differentiate it on both WK and KaniWani.
The other ones, I’ve similarly added different synonyms. I usually spend some time on Jisho.org looking up the different definitions, looking into the example sentences, looking into the different kanji and their various nuances, etc. Once I’ve figured out a way to separate them in my own mind, I write down a few short notes on the item pages, add a few synonyms, and then try them out for a few reviews to see if they help. If they don’t then I try something else. Etc.
As I hinted at earlier, our brains are literally learning machines. They are very good at eventually figuring these things out. Of course one has to put a bit of effort into it, but it can definitely be done.
At the end of the day, WK is ‘just’ a tool to facilitate this natural learning process. It’s not perfect, and everyone learns a bit differently, so it’s impossible for a general site like this to perfectly accommodate everyone. But nevertheless, it is still pretty good, and even without any scripts at all (I personally don’t use any; again, nothing against them, it’s just too much extra logistics for me) one can definitely adapt WK with its already-existing features to further customize it to one’s own needs. E.g. using the user-synonyms, using the Notes sections on each item, etc.
Yep. For such ‘leeches’, it does take some extra effort to disambiguate them. I’ve added notes and/or user synonyms to a good chunk of items on WK. That’s what works for me, so that’s what I do. It’s just a tool. It’s not perfect.
Yep. I get it. I agree, there are many such imperfections in WK’s system.
It’s not going to be hard to remember, “Oh, this is the one I always forget,” as these are precisely the ones that will keep coming back. These are the so-called leeches. Just like your ‘learning machine’ brain can learn (for most items) which kanji mean what, and which ones are pronounced how, it will also learn (for the leeches) which ones you keep getting mixed up or forgetting, etc.
Right here in this very thread, you’ve listed several words you’ve consistently had issues with. How did you manage to make such mentions? Because your brain has learned and remembered these to the extent that they just came to mind when you wanted to bring up some examples. That’s learning. Granted, it’s learning what you’re having trouble learning, but at least it’s learning where you need to focus your attention on addressing that learning-road-bump. Once you’ve identified the trouble words (aka leeches), you can start trying out different things to learn them better. E.g. adding in new synonyms; reminding yourself not to use the generic answers, but to use more specific or descriptive ones; making notes on the item pages; asking questions in the forums for advice from other people who’ve also faced the same confusions; making suggestions to WK staff to make better meanings or mnemonics, etc. etc. etc.
But, eventually, after all this, you will learn even the nastiest of synonym-hell words/kanjis. You just have to keep at it. Not mindlessly bashing your head against it, like with boring rote memorization – but nevertheless simply by applying the attention of your in-born, natural, super-powered learning-machine brain at it. Just keep ‘doing your best’. 頑張れ！
See! Exactly! Your learning-machine brain eventually figured out a way to learn it!
Nope. You’re getting hung up on a throw-away example of what I said was a worst-case scenario. As in, I’m not recommending the worst case scenario as the solution to your problem; quite the opposite. The ‘worst case’ was in comparison to the script you use, which allows you to make corrections to ‘wrongly marked correct’ answers in the same review session, whereas in the workaround I was describing there is a long delay between when you submit a ‘wrongly correct’ answer, and the next time that item will show up in your reviews. Given such a time-lag, there’s a risk you’ll forget to flub the answer on the next review. That’s the worst possible thing that could happen. In other words, it’s not really that big of a deal! The worst possible case is hardly a problem at all, in the grand scheme of things.
Of course you can avoid this ‘worst case’ by doing any number of things to deal with leeches (as both you and I have pointed out). That’s the point! It’s easy to avoid this worst case scenario. In other words, the workaround method I’m describing basically has almost no downsides. Sure, it’s not as efficient as the script you’ve been using. But it’s not that bad, in the long run.
It’s not hard to remember which words are giving you trouble – precisely because those are the words that are giving you trouble! It’s not hard to flub an answer for a review even a couple months away. I do it all the time. It’s simply not an issue.
And therefore it is a legitimate workaround to an issue that you said had no workaround whatsoever. That’s it. That’s all I’ve been saying.
But if you focus narrowly on having to be a perfect analog to how your script works, then it can be easy to miss the fact that a workaround does actually exist. And it does actually work. Because people (such as myself) actually do use said workaround all the time.
I fully agree with this. Is it so impossible to believe that I myself have the same problem and I handle it without using any scripts, simply by intentionally flubbing answers when troublesome items come up for review? Is it so impossible to believe that there is actually a usable workaround for an issue you said there was no workaround for?
No. I’m saying you will not have any difficulty remembering when to intentionally botch an item. You’ll instinctivelyknow when you need to, precisely because it will be ‘one of those damn verb pairs that are always giving me trouble’, because your natural-born brain will automatically learn which items keep giving you trouble.
Indeed, you’ve already demonstrated this capability by spontaneously remembering a bunch of examples of where you’ve had trouble remembering/learning things in the past. And you’ve even given examples of how you managed to overcome this challenge and adapt your tools to (in your example) remind yourself every month of the guy’s name. In the case of WaniKani, you could adapt WK by using user synonyms, the editable notes sections on item pages, the forums, etc. etc. In particular, you can intentionally flub answers so that reviews come up more frequently. (But there are many other things you can also do, of course, as well.)
Or, as I’ve already mentioned, you could just wait a few days for your script to get fixed.
I always confuse it with preparation and hypothesis.
