I have searched around on the forum, including the community threads, but I unfortunately was not being able to find it. I realized that for listening I am missing quite a bit, and while immersion is great for training it, I would like to have a tool similar to https://www.kaniwani.com/ to aid my learning. Focused on Reading->Meaning/Kanji, does someone know if this exists? Preferably with an API-link to WaniKani, but would be interested in it even if that is not possible.
To explain why I would like this I made the image below. The green line is WaniKani, directly learning how to read Kanji. Next to this I have the blue line KaniWani, assisting me on Meaning → Reading. The dotted lines are what it forces me to think about when answering. However from this I am missing the red line.
I think such a learning tool would benefit from also doing something like Reading → Sentence with Reading → Reading again with audio. However I feel I am then asking quite a lot . Lastly, it does not have to be free, but I prefer if it costs something I can try it out first, and that if it is not free, I can buy it once for a lifetime as I do not like subscriptions.
Thank you in advance for your assisting in my search! Even if you think it does not fit perfectly, please still respond, as it may assist others that search for something similar as well or might be a good starting point for me to try things out.
After another long search I found something interesting; 漢字検定１０級書き取り問題【１】
This is not an SRS system and not coupled to WaniKani, but it exactly the kind of thing I am searching for in how it is presented. It show the hiragana, with a context sentence. Image below for reference, the kanji is only shown after pressing the button.
I guess I would export WaniKani to Anki, and then spend some time customizing cards in Anki. The good thing, and the bad thing, about Anki is that you can customize your cards any way you want. Making cards reading to kanji or meaning to kanji is easy.
Anki itself is free, and there are loads of community decks that you can use if you don’t want to export from WaniKani. The iOS app is not free, but well worth it imo.
Adapting it will take a bit, but making it myself seems like a logical direction, and beneficial for others as well. When I got some results I will post here again with instructions on how to do it.
Ringotan uses a similar format plus SRS. But it requires you to write the kanji instead of just flipping the card. I enjoy it very much. It’s a humbling experience.
I can absolutely understand, why you would want this (I also wanted it a long time ago), but I would like to give you some explanation of why I think it is not worth it.
Firstly, japanese is quite full of homonyms (hopefully I chose the correct term, but doesnt matter in the end) - words that have the same reading, but different meaning. This alone will become quite annoying in any SRS setup.
Secondly, adding more and more SRS systems to your studies is very dangerous. Over time they tend to stack up more and more daily content (by design), which can quickly become overwhelming. If you are at some point only clearing your SRS queues instead of actively engaging with the language, you will most likely stall in your learning.
Lastly, engaging with the language itself (in this case through listening) is the only thing that will actually make you understand the language. Through regular vocab studies (be it WK or whatever), you should already have sufficient familiarity with the words that once they pop up repeatedly in you listening (or reading), you should be able to recognize them.
In the beginning this will obviously often not happen at all. Even now I often listen to something and wonder what a word means, only to realize I already studied it. But this would most likely not improve through dedicated reading to meaning studies. Instead it improves through constant listening and occasionally looking up stuff, if you don’t recognize essential words.
So my advice is: Do not add more and more structured (SRS like) resources to your studies. Instead, if you feel you have space for more studying, add active engagement with the language. Listen - even if you don’t understand everything, just try getting as much as possible and you will see improvements. Do shadowing, Do speaking lessons, Read.
Soo, that was a short rant. Take away from it what you want, this is in the end only my personal experience.
Hmm, I get where you are coming from, however I do already a fair bit of engagement with the language and plan on continue to do so. Maybe counterintuitive, but adding KaniWani to my list of systems actually reduced the load, because it directly made my WaniKani queue shorter and both systems are directly linked to each other. Having all “directions” of studies allows my brain to process it better. I suspect because it allows me to think instead of only reading the kanji.
I appreciate you sharing your experience! And I will keep in mind that I should not overdo it. For now I do want to try if it actually helps me, but if I notice it takes away from actual engagement I will go back to basics
Interesting side node is that I will probably never do an SRS system for grammer, because I noticed it actually does not help me because it does not train the patterns required for it. Instead I try to study it in different ways.
I managed to cobble up an Anki plugin to fetch data from WaniKani and make them sort of presentable (audio not working yet). The first card is only the first line and the other lines are shown in the result. It is far from something that works properly though.
As promised, hereby what I made so everyone can use it as well;
First make sure you have backup your Anki etc, while I think nothing will go wrong, I would hate it if it happens. I made the repo MIT-licensed, so you are free to do whatever you want with the code.
A menu with WaniReadingToMeaning is now in Anki, first add your API key to the settings. You can then use Initial Setup (only button that works).
The update button does not work, and it is not very polished, so errors might occur. I did make sure to test that it can fetch more than 500 items, but there is no filtering etc. It is however possible that some items are not parsed properly. I also think the audio playback uses the plugin from Jlab, but I am not sure.
Edit; forgot to note; you can change what the name is of the Deck it creates in the settings. As it creates a new deck you can always delete it after if you don’t like what it created
. Lastly, it does not have to be free, but I prefer if it costs something I can try it out first, and that if it is not free, I can buy it once for a lifetime as I do not like subscriptions.
