I’m on board with using the infinitive forms of verbs (to see, etc.), which is the traditional dictionary form in most languages (weird English, requiring two words to do what most languages do with one). No problem there.
But I hope you do get a chance to go through and clean these all up so that you’re CONSISTENT all the way through! Repeatedly I’ve been told that I’m wrong when I USE the infinitive, other times that I’m wrong when I DON’T, and literally no way to know what will be expected before getting it wrong. And don’t worry, I’m not talking about the ambiguous ones which could be either noun or verb; it happens repeatedly even when a word ONLY is a verb in English.
It’s slow enough poking along through the levels at the top allowable speed, so it can be frustrating to be set back by an incorrectly-rejected answer. Consistency is all I ask.
Consistency is indeed important. I have consistency issues with some of WaniKani’s vocabulary items as well. But I’m not sure what specific verbs you’re referring to. I haven’t found the system to be inconsistent in that regard.
ETA: OK, there’s maybe one in level four. 見える which is translated as Can See. “To be able to see” or “to be visible” might be a more consistent first definition. But those are listed as synonyms.
Or perhaps you’re thinking the infinitive rule applies to kanji as well as vocabulary. It doesn’t.
So 引 will be defined (as a kanji) as “Pull” but 引く will be defined (as a vocabulary word) as “To Pull”. (Because 引くis the dictionary form of the verb which is as close as Japanese comes to an infinitive. 引 on the other hand is just a kanji waiting for a friend (another character) to turn it into an actual word. It has a sort of meaning (pull) but that’s really just because it lends that meaning to words it’s used in. But that meaning isn’t any particular part of speech, hence “pull” rather than “to pull”.
Post some examples because I don’t remember this ever happening to me, but from what I understand they’ve changed the lower-level content somewhat significantly since I did those levels.
Can’t possibly go through and find all the examples. An obvious one is the kanji 見, which only allows the verb SEE as an answer. SEE can only be a verb, unless you want to refer to the pontifical establishment in the Vatican, which I’m sure is not considered here. So TO SEE should be accepted to be consistent with other acceptable infinitive verb answers.
見 (the kanji) isn’t a verb, though. As kanji, it only represents a general meaning or sense. It can contribute the meaning ‘outlook’ or ‘view’ (n.), ‘visible’ (adj.), ‘see’ (v), etc. to a word.
It’s only specifically “to see” when used in the vocab word 見る.
Infinitives are used in vocab to concretely differentiate verbs from other parts of speech. With a kanji, it has no part of speech, and so whether it conflicts with other parts of speech isn’t a concern, and thus even English keywords that are verbs don’t require the infinitive.
I don’t think any kanji character will have the meaning in infinitive form, so it should be easy to remember.