Really great. I’ve been learning vocab on Anki too because I know WaniKani doesn’t have every word but WaniKani’s system works a lot better for me so I’m glad to be able to do as much as I can here.
I understand people like to be able to learn different things in different ways but for me I don’t see any reason not to learn Kanji and vocab together.
As long as WaniKani doesn’t start trying to teach grammar I’m happy.
Oh they knew people wouldn’t like it.
Just to clear this up, as I feel this is taken out of context, the feature was held back because there was quite a lot of discussion surrounding other changes at the time, which would have meant this feature would not have been well received then, or may have flown under the radar. I didn’t intend for that sentence to be interpreted as “we knew you wouldn’t like it and did it anyway”.
hopefully I am not opening myself up to a whole world of hurt here by clarifying this… please be gentle.
I’m willing to add whatever context you feel is missing.
I have nothing against you as a person, and especially as a newer person, but after researching EtoEto because I would have thought that would have been the next thing to be announced since it’s been in development for years and years now and then finding out that EtoEto was actually intended as a replacement for Textfugu, which the team never seems to have officially told people is not actually getting an update (or rather the project was dead without completion) despite a selling point being that it would “Always [be] getting updates,” I’ve lost a lot of faith and trust in Tofugu as a whole.
Which features are you referring to? The somewhat kinder typo forgiveness? The UI changes?
For years, the WK team has rejected the suggestion of many common kanji words that are unintuitive on the bias that the readings are well-represented or over-represented and has said that the vocab is to reinforce the kanji. If the WK wants to make reading fluency the new objective, then why not start with the content that doesn’t require a change to the system? Changing the objective of the site from learning to read kanji to fluently reading Japanese is a major development. It’s not going to fly under the radar. That’s the kind of development that surely the whole team would know about, right? And you said you’ve been working on it since last year/2022? I understand that engineering and content team members might not be interacting much but the actions don’t really add up.
I am just referring to Kana-Only Vocabulary.
I think DIO-Berry meant what changes were you referring to when you said
And why would they have made it less well received?
Oh right, sorry, the other changes I was referring to was the updates to lessons and reviews that was released at the end of March.
Quite. Koichi took far too long to stop accepting new TextFugu subscriptions after he’d stopped updating TextFugu. Speaking personally, there was a long period where the TextFugu forums felt like they consisted of just me alone, plus wave after wave of new subscribers posting “just subscribed! looking forward to all of those promised updates!”, and for every single user, I had to restrain myself from going “sorry, you wasted your money. All their efforts are going towards WaniKani now.”
And yeah, that presumably predated Scott’s arrival by a fair while, but “And where is Koichi now?” is a thought that often crosses my mind.
Maybe Koichi is GRR Martin and is busy not writing The Winds of Winter.
If the summary page isn’t back by autumn, do we have permission to imprison Koichi on a deserted island?
Hello all, a quick reminder that we’re publishing the first three kana vocabulary items today. They are:
You should see them appear in your lesson queue shortly. Each time we publish words, I’ll update the original post, with links to the item pages.
Thank you also for the detailed feedback. It’s much appreciated, both positive and negative, and we’re taking it all on board. I think it’s fair to say that the biggest concern here is whether kana vocabulary will be opt-in, and I want to confirm that we’re looking at the best way to make it opt-in (but not excluding current WaniKani users who do want to learn it, because we don’t want to do that).
There were also a few questions about words in both kanji and kana, like 未だ. For words like this, we’re planning to move the kanji version to a higher level once we’ve published the kana version. That’s because 未だ is almost always read as いまだ, though まだ is also a correct reading. If a Japanese person sees 未だ, they’ll usually read it as いまだ unless it has furigana. いまだ is a fairly advanced word compared to まだ, and we’ve been trying to figure out the best way to deal with these cases for a long time now. We think that the best solution is to teach まだ at a low level in kana, then teach 未だ at a more appropriate level. The same logic applies to 申し申し, which can be pronounced もしもし, but that’s very rare. We plan to move the kanji version to a much higher level once we have the kana version, because even the もうしもうし reading is very specific in its use. I hope the longwinded explanation answers that point!
To answer some other points about the intentions of the WaniKani team: our goal is to help as many learners as possible to learn as much Japanese as possible. And especially to be able to read the stuff they love to read. That’s what is guiding us in all of this. I know lots of people are passionate about what WaniKani should and shouldn’t do, and that’s great. And we’re passionate about it too. I know we won’t always agree on how to get there, but I’m pretty sure that we all have the same end goal. Thanks to everyone who’s given constructive feedback and kept the conversation civil.
Anyway, for those of you who don’t know them already, I really hope you enjoy learning these new words. For those who do, I hope it won’t be too much of a hassle, and that maybe the explanations and context add to your understanding of how some of the words are used.
Thanks again for all the feedback so far, and happy studying. 
ホッチキス seems to be in level 48 instead of level 28.
You’re right, thanks for letting me know! I’ve fixed the typo in the list.
Just saw apple pop up in my lessons! I am so excited and thankful for the WK team to implement this new change and integrate more vocabulary into WK.
I am indifferent on the actual inclusion of kana vocab as I only use this site to learn kanji, but I do think that this is a good idea. Learning obscure / advanced readings of a kanji and pushing the more common spelling into kana vocab was not something I had thought of.
Just saw the first two kana only words in my lessons. even if I already knew them it was nice to see that wanikani is expanding and I am looking forward to the new additions in the list, and to the expansion of the list itself. I would love to see a lot more onomatopoeia as they are particularly tricky for me. Thank you anyway for your hard work 
Just wanted to say I’m sorry 
This is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but a whimper.
Best of luck.
This should be a separate track so that those who came here for the kanji only can focus on that. As for figuring out how to make it opt-in/separate - this should have been done before adding the new vocabulary. Of course, you never listen to your customers so what do I expect …
the irony…there is kanji for apple…(even if it’s outdated not used…)…but yeah skip that…
lets just keep adding new vocab and now throw in kana and skip the other kanji that’s missing from the joyo… sure why not…
if it makes people keep paying monthly it’s cash in wks pocket
… thank heavens for the kitsun migration!!! 
I like the new kana only words with mnemonics. Keep them comming. I would also love mnemonics for grammar! The more mnemonics, the better.
