Is it ok to forget?

Nope I’m afraid you will have to commit seppuku if you forget. It’s the reason so few people reach level 60.

Yes, forgetting is normal. You have embarked on the journey of learning a crazy alien language that the foreign service institute designated as the most difficult for European language natives to learn. Don’t sweat it.

The trick with language is to realize it’s not entirely an academic exercise. You learned your native language by having the meanings reinforced by emotional experiences and could speak it well before you even went to school. Think of how there are some words in English (or whatever language is your native tongue) that can trigger a strong emotional response simply by reading or hearing them. Especially if it has strong connotations. A socially conscious American could travel to the UK and feel angry after overhearing someone using the word “fag” in a casual manner if they weren’t aware that in the British isles it simply means cigarette.

You can hijack this principle. For example if you like cats ( 猫, ねこ) when looking at how it’s written and hearing its sound try to evoke how cats make you feel so that eventually when you hear and see the word instead of
猫 → cat → emotional experience you get 猫 → emotional experience.

Not all of the mnemonics on wanikani are good for everyone. Use the notes and get creative and make your own. Don’t just skip to the next review when you get one wrong. Spend time with it and see if you can relate it to your emotions or internal senses.

Good luck

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So, if you burn an item in WaniKani, will it never be reviewed again?

If you go to the page of a burned item, near the bottom is the resurrect button. This will bring the word back to the very first SRS level.

Capture

Alternatively, if you use WK on PC, you can look into the goodies from the API and 3rd party apps section! :purple_heart:

At a cursory glance, you could look into:

Burn Manager
Burn Reviews

And you can also review burns through the self-study quiz script.

If you never try, you’ll never know what you are capable of. -John Barrow

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again. - W. Clement Stone

Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s ok to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. - H. Stanley Judd

To answer your question, yes, it’s okay to forget. You’ll get better and better with time, as long as you don’t give up!

You never going to get everything 100% right, that’s unrealistic. Even on a bad day, if you’re getting 50% of the items right, you’re still learning 50% more than you would have if you hadn’t used WK at all. On good days, I’m confident you’ll be able to get 75-95% which is my common range. Forgetting a few is only natural, and the SRS system will catch the sand that slips through your fingers and give you special help with those tricky items by showing them to you more often.

Forgetting is okay!

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