I was greatly surprised to see new additions in the WaniKani system. When I was reviewing my lessons I stumbled upon this mysterious item - リンゴ. Baffled by the unknown characters I’ve never seen before, I did a quick search only to realize that these were katakana characters!
I opened up the forums and realized that the WaniKani team has added new Kana-Only vocabulary items. Apparently they include this new writing system called katakana.
This is when I realized that something was missing. Something more fundamental. That’s right! Since I cannot read and understand katakana characters, I suggest the WaniKani team to add them into the SRS. I feel like Kana-character additions would be really well received! I’d love to see 100+ more items in my regular queue. By adding the katakana writing system, beginners who are just getting started like me will have a greater context and better understanding while learning the new mysterious kana-only vocabulary items!
And while you’re at it, I think you should also include hiragana in the SRS. After all, I still have trouble reading some of the characters. Always mistaking ぎ with ざ. Ahh, I can’t do it. I need it in the SRS as well.
So please, WaniKani team. Let’s add hiragana and katakana in the SRS. I think it will further enhance the learning experience for everybody!
I was taking this seriously at first and I was honestly baffled how someone got 22 levels into WaniKani, learnt all that kanji, and somehow never touched Katakana.
A humbling experience: I was presented with 「あそこ」 in my reviews, and immediately my mind directly went to the concept of a place far away from the speaker and the listener. However, WK helpfully marked me wrong, because of course, 「あそこ」is “over there”. This mistake that’s entirely my fault taught me that I had become cocky and arrogant somewhere along my Japanese journey. Thank you!
A level 0 to teach kana has been suggested many times and I definitely wouldn’t be against it. It would definitely be useful to many new starters, and people who can already read kana could opt out (if the option is offered) or just burn these items very quickly as there is only so many of those.
Why stop there? WaniKani should be inclusive for everyone. Introduce computer literacy training and the English alphabet into the SRS system, so regardless of your skill level you can enjoy WaniKani.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Why stop here? Literally because the things you mentioned are not Japanese and have nothing to do with Japanese studies. The mission for wanikani is to help people read Japanese: kanas are part of this, what you mentioned isn’t.
I honestly can’t tell if you’re just making lighthearted jokes or if you genuinely think they’re making a mistake adding kana-only vocab to Wanikani.
I do think it’s an okay addition in concept. There’s lot of useful vocabulary that doesn’t use kanji, and what’s wrong with having more useful vocabulary lessons?
The execution, however, may need some work. I do think it should be something that people can opt out of if they want to keep WK as a kanji-focused resource (after all, plenty of other resources offer kana-only vocabulary already), and I think it may be less messy to have kana-only vocab as its own distinct lesson group within WK that people can look at at any time instead of randomly sprinkling them into the existing lessons. There’s no kanji “prerequisite” to learning these vocab so I don’t think it makes sense to tie them to any WK level progression. That would make it easier to present related words together, like for example ここ, そこ, あそこ, and どこ (and the other こ-, そ-, あそ-, and ど- words.)
If WK’s architecture simply doesn’t allow for presenting kana-only vocabulary in a way that makes sense, then maybe it’s not the best idea after all.
Why stop there? Why not actually be serious about it? Why doesn’t wanikani have a feature for me to srs my credit card information so I can remember it without having to pull out my wallet.
One thing I’ve always found really hard is remembering when I have to do my reviews. WaniKani should add my review information to my review sessions so I can review when I have to do them so I never forget.
