I'm not ready for my own suggestion yet... But can we have a hardcore mode for burned items?

I’m still on the early levels, but I would like to be able to learn Japanese to the point where I am, you know, using it. For this I will be doing things like using a Japanese-Japanese dictionary to find out what things really mean in Japanese, without the English getting in the way. But what if there was a way to actually learn Japanese-Japanese definitions in WaniKani? What if instead of facing the choice between resetting to a lower level to review the easy items, we could instead learn them all over again? What if… and stay with me on this one… what if instead of burning our turtles, we could start to really, truly, burn Japanese? I’m talking about a Japanese definitions mode for burned items.

Now, I’m not expecting such a huge task to be accomplished anytime soon. Besides, I don’t expect to be burning any items for another 5 months. This is why I will generously give @koichi and the team until November to accomplish this all important work. :grinning:

Edit:

  1. This would function as either:

    A) A definition of the item in Japanese, with the user expected to input the item; or

    B) The item displayed, with the user expected to input a definition in Japanese.

  2. Users do not have to convert their items to Burning Japanese mode if they do not want to.

  3. Progression would follow normal progression rules, with the addition that the every item in the progression must be a burnt item. Each level must be progressively completed in the hard core mode, so you would perhaps have another number to the left of your profile pic in the forums, in a blazing red, to indicate your progression in hard core mode. The words used in the definitions would also need to be words already learned in the normal mode.

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This is all very vague. Do you mean that instead of meaning or reading, we then have to enter our definition of a word?

I think he refers that instead of the actual mode, WK will give a japanese definition and we need to put the kanji/words that this definition actually refers.

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Ah, OK, so the opposite of my understanding.

Not a bad idea, although perhaps it should be done separately from WK, like KaniWani but with definitions as clue.

In addition to not being entirely clear on how it would actually work, let’s face it, it wouldn’t happen. There are far too many things on their to-do list to consider adding what amounts to 60 levels of new content that come after level 60. They already use the reasoning of “very few people ever get to level 60” to explain why it’s not a high priority to create more kanji and vocab levels.

We would enter the definition in Japanese, which would not include the word we are defining, at least that was the way I envisioned it.

This is actually a pretty good idea too… (maybe I should claim that this was my original intention.)

… ahem… yes that was my intention. Brilliant idea I came up with… Thank you for clarifying @DetectiveAzul…I will probably need to edit the OP to truly reflect my brilliance. :sweat_smile:

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Items would need to first be burned in order to do this. It may also be possible to make the progression follow a similar system to that of the WaniKani system. Items would need to be unlocked both by being burnt items, and by being progressed through the levels. So a level 60 would not immediately encounter 1000s of new items to learn all in one hit. Also, this would be entirely optional.

What you said doesn’t really change the main issue, which is WK has more content on it right now than the people who use the site generally ever consume.

And so there’s no real economic incentive for them to just add content on top of that that an even smaller percentage will ever access.

Well IBM built Watson (who won in Jeopardy) that uses some kind of Artificial Intelligence similar to what is needed for this. In other words, this (if possible) would probably take several decades before it can become reality. No two persons can define one word the same way, and the computer will have to parse all of these definitions and decide which ones are correct. So “difficult” is understating it.

The other direction is way easier. Just use definitions from a JP-JP dictionary as clue, then we have to enter the word. Kinda like KaniWani but the clues are not in English.

In terms of seeing the definition first, you couldn’t just rip this from a dictionary. As much as possible, definitions should cover only vocabulary that’s already been learned, with a gradual progression of kana only vocab.
For the reverse action, where the user needs to come up with the definition, I could only imagine this working anki style where you just say if you did or didn’t know how to define it.

Oh yeah, you’re right of course.

But I hate Anki.

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That seems to be beyond the scope of the application.

Well IBM built Watson (who won in Jeopardy) that uses some kind of Artificial Intelligence similar to what is needed for this. In other words, this (if possible) would probably take several decades before it can become reality. No two persons can define one word the same way, and the computer will have to parse all of these definitions and decide which ones are correct. So “difficult” is understating it.

@plantron it is possible even today, Machine Learning (the part of the AI study which is about these things) is being used on daily basis, and similar things are involved in e.g. email spam checking.

So I think that an algorithm can be created and trained (for example, by using definitions from other dictionaries) for this, but how accurate it will be is a big question, and another is how many resources it would take - especially given the language in question is Japanese, not English. Anything which involves processing natural languages other than English is usually harder, because there was a lot less of previous work for these languages.

Basically this idea is not realistic - potentially really hard to do and with very little return. It is cheaper and more reliable to just use flashcards system - you see a term, you give the definition in your head.

I also hate anki :slight_smile: but I think that’s the only way this could work unless someone were to develop this amazing Japanese AI!

Still I think the definition - kanji thing would actually be quite cool.

Maybe for the “show kanji, input definition” bit, it could be done Memrise-style. The definition is provided below in a series of jumbled chunks with a red herring or two thrown in, and you have to tap on them to input them in the correct order.

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