completely missed the point… but that’s ok …
the main benefit now are the bookclubs …migrated all my stuff to kitsun so I can learn kanji! so far middle of level 46 kanji … w/o the silly constraints of wk thank goodness for kitsun @neicul !!! and maybe one day I’ll use marumori…
I understand your frustration, but maybe at some point the best thing to do if a service isn’t satisfying your needs any longer is to move on.
I have no idea what happened or is happening at tofugu, but from personal experience, companies change direction for whatever reasons, sometimes it’s new management, sometimes it’s something else. It’s not always for the best, but that’s how these things work.
already did…
even provided a way to help others do the same…
wk needs some tough love or it’s just not gonna make it…
Came here to say that I’m actually super excited about kana-only words, my first reaction was literally “oh thank god I can do it on WK now”. It’s just that too many of them on the current list seem as basic as it gets. Because of that, I would indeed support the idea of an opt-out button or a separate track. Once there’re many new words incorporated into the system, it can get burdensome for those on the higher levels.
But I’m also hoping to see more kana words in the future, especially onomatopeia.
I struggle to understand people who say that they only came here to learn kanji. Like, what use kanji are on their own? When using the language, you’re operating with vocabulary, right? I really don’t get how it is bad to have more vocabulary instead of less, but fine, to each their own.
The breaking-the-1-year-promise thing is something I’m really indifferent about, although it’s kinda understandable that if, at first, people are sold the idea that they can speedrun the most difficult aspect of such a difficult language and then they get to see it’s not so easily feasible, it can be disappointing. Adding extra items to stretch that term further out might be frustrating to some.
I personally value the possibility to pick your own pace without that constant nudging like keeping a Duolingo streak or any sort of deadlines (the 1 or 2 years line is marketing- or self-induced and thus negligible). My initial estimate was that I’d finish WK in two years, well, it’s been over two years already and I’m just over the half, but it’s fine. I’m here for the language, not the trophy, so kana words are very welcome, having them here would help smooth out my learning process significantly. Please do add more.
This is my favourite post of the whole thread 
I struggle to understand people who say that they only came here to learn kanji. Like, what use kanji are on their own? When using the language, you’re operating with vocabulary, right?
I struggle to understand why this is so difficult to grasp: some of us already have a large vocabulary and just need to study kanji, and some of us are already studying vocab elsewhere. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Are you only using WaniKani to study??
It’s part of the JLPT and are taught to native japanese speakers regardless. That’s enough of a reason for many.
The main issue for me is that I don’t think that WK is very good at teaching vocab already, so adding more words isn’t going to change that for me and I’ll keep using my usual Anki decks. WK’s vocab is good insofar that it’s about reinforcing the kanji readings and meanings, not really about learning words efficiently.
Some issues:
Only Jp->En, no first-party option to practice anything else (be it En->Jp or Meaning->Jp or kana->kanji for instance). That’s terrible if you actually want to produce the language (personally I don’t care for that at the moment, but for a fully-featured vocab solution it’s not acceptable IMO).
The example sentences are often pretty bad.
Examples don’t have a recording
Many synonyms introduced at the same time which makes it very hard to really commit any of them to memory (not helped by the bad examples)
No way to pick and chose what you want to learn based on your interests. WK taught me how to say “constitutional government”, “steam whistle” and “chamber of representatives” but not “a lie” (I still have 13 levels ahead of me before I get there)
No way to add custom vocabulary
Adding “apple” and “stapler” to the vocabulary list won’t fix any of this.
Wow, okay, that sounds tense.
No, I’m not only using WK to study, but I also don’t like to complicate things for myself. I don’t need to study vocab elsewhere if I have enough here. To a certain point—kana words were missing, for example, so I had to learn them elsewhere, and the grammar is a different story altogether, as is immersion. Spreading the learning process over a bigger number of platforms makes it less sustainable to me.
And I genuinely, unironically don’t understand the thing with “just need to study kanji”. Like, how does it work? How do you keep kanji apart from the words? Let’s say you do have a broad vocab out of listening/speaking practice and you come here to learn how the words are written. Let’s say you know that there are at least two つく’s, one means ‘to arrive’ and the other ‘to be attached’. You then come to learn kanji for the vocabulary items, which are 着く and 付く, and for jukugo words that you might know that include those kanji. Having vocabulary lessons helps reinforce this. Or do you really only need on’yomi? Or something else altogether?
I’ve started learning Japanese a little over 6 months ago and I’ve put the focus on WK (even though I also study grammar and some vocab elsewhere). Now when I try to read real Japanese a lot of the time I can identify 80+% of the kanji, and derive meaning from knowing the meaning of the kanji, but very often I won’t recognize a word even though it’s taught on this website.
Like the other day I was playing a game that used the word 地域, I learned those kanji here and thanks to that and with the context was able to derive that it meant “a location” or something like that, but I thought it was the first time I encountered it.
In fact, not only is it taught here, I’ve even got it to Master.
Because WK teaches words without context and likes to teach you like 4 different words with the same kanji and a similar meaning at once, it very often doesn’t stick at all for me.
And that’s fine by me, because I’m here to learn kanji, not vocab, and clearly it worked here because I did remember the kanji and thanks to that was able to understand the sentence.
But that’s why I said above that I don’t think that WK is good at teaching vocab. Fortunately there are many other applications and websites made specifically for studying vocabulary.
i’m not sure if this is a revelation to anyone but i see a lot of people talking about EtoEto as if its development status is unconfirmed
this would suggest otherwise?
I guess it boils down to a personal learning style after all.
I rarely even read example sentences because they don’t do much for me, SRS-drilling the words and their reading/meaning does. When I encounter a word I learned on WK in the wild, I just know what it means or make a good enough guess if I forget synonyms. Although it’s probably worse for productive language skills cause without enough examples it slows down the choice in your head. But still, no singular sample sentence is comparable to seeing a word in the context of a longer body of text that has personal relevance to you, imo.
Not having a recording for examples is not much of a problem to me either cause I find Japanese phonetics pretty straightforward. Maybe if the bar was set really high and I needed to learn to place the pitch accents properly it would be different.
I do agree that the order of learning vocab is weird at times, I probably use the word for ‘steam whistle’ in my native language once a decade if ever lol. The kanji for “he”/‘kare’ finally showed up one level ago and I was like, yeah, just about time. Don’t mind the constitutional government though.
For the first option you’ve edited in, En-Jp, I’ve been using KaniWani and it works well. Agree on that it would’ve been more convenient to just have it on WK and have more options for practice.
From my experience, while apples and staplers won’t fix any of this, they won’t make it worse either, they’ll just be something of their own.
The various pitch patterns really change the way some word are pronounced and merge together though, in my experience. Hearing the sentence also makes different parts of your brain work and help with retention and recognition, I think.
I completely agree on this, I’m not against it personally, I don’t think it’s super useful but I don’t think it’s a negative either. I can sympathize with the people who were hoping for more kanji instead though.
No offense, that’s just something I thought about when reading your message: could it be that you rush through it? I see you’re level 28, to get there in 6 months is to work through a ton of items at a very rapid tempo. Took me about a year to get there, didn’t want to cram it all in my head too fast. It does happen to me as well, that I forget a word that I literally learned here (and perhaps even burned), but really not so often as to be frustrated by it.
The context thing was the only reason for me to use Duolingo btw. No memorization of kanji or the words I don’t know, no complex grammar, just getting used to context, basic sentence structures, and semi-active usage of the words I learned here.
And I genuinely, unironically don’t understand the thing with “just need to study kanji”. Like, how does it work? How do you keep kanji apart from the words? Let’s say you do have a broad vocab out of listening/speaking practice and you come here to learn how the words are written. Let’s say you know that there are at least two つく’s, one means ‘to arrive’ and the other ‘to be attached’. You then come to learn kanji for the vocabulary items, which are 着く and 付く, and for jukugo words that you might know that include those kanji. Having vocabulary lessons helps reinforce this. Or do you really only need on’yomi? Or something else altogether?
The way WaniKani worked was fine. It used vocab as a tool to reinforce the readings of the kanji, not as an ends in itself. Think about how children learn kanji in Japan… they are already fluent in the language, they just need to learn to associate the characters with the sounds/words they already know.
Cluttering it up with unskippable kana vocabulary does nothing to help that process.
Yeah, that’s why I said in my first message that I’m totally for a separate track or opt-out of kana or whatever customization there could be. I’m not a fan of the idea to go through stuff like konnichiwa or kore/sore by this point (although it wouldn’t eat that much of my time). Yet I’m not a Japanese child fluent in the language either, so to me, it’s a very valuable addition, at least in prospect.
I’m rushing for sure, but I don’t think that’s the factor here. It’s just that I find it very hard to learn vocabulary without context, especially for more abstract concepts. After all, rushing or no rushing I would still get the same amount of exposure to every entry through SRS, and with the same intervals.
In general after I’ve encountered the word in the real world a few times it sticks because I have something to attach it to. Like 一体 just wouldn’t stick for me (due to the unexpected meaning) until I played Parasite Eve where the word is used a lot and now it’s not a problem anymore.
Currently my plan is to continue at one level/week until level 40, then slow down and spend more time “immersing” or studying through other resources (while still continuing WK at a slower pace).
I personally agree with @Lunskey. I have no problem with the inclusion of kana-only vocabulary, in fact I’m excited to go through them, even if a lot of them I already know. There will always be some new discoveries. Everyone here is learning Japanese after all (and kanji itself is “useless” after all, unless we apply them into real words. Real words is what I’m interested in, at the end of the day… be it kanji compounds or kana-only).
I think the WK team might be thinking more about what I believe is the vast majority of learners on the platform, who are more beginners than advanced learners (this is just a guess, pls don’t throw stones at me).
With that being said I completely understand what is making people complain, and IMO it seems to be related not to the content per se, but how the website is implementing the content. Other platforms are much more flexible to adapt to each one’s needs (I can think of BunPro off the top of my head), while WK is just “this is it and there’s no way around it”, which can of course be frustrating especially to people who already are more advanced in their Japanese knowledge.
So… I agree: an opt-in/opt-out, or different paths that tackle different knowledge areas in the language seems to be the perfect solution, which will embrace every different learner and also help make the website more complete.
I don’t want to just assume, but it seems to me this is unfortunately a “money-grabber” strategy, to keep (non-lifetime) users paying for the longest period of time possible…
The way rushing worked for me was that my brain felt a bit too overwhelmed and processed stuff slower and clumsier under this kind of stress, even with the same amount of eventual exposure to every item. When it got too much, some words just fell out of my system, idk.
Another problem I got at some point with rushing through WK was that, especially without external practice, I felt like I’m pushing the old words from the basic levels out of my head, despite all the SRS, to fit in the stuff I worked through on the later levels. Although if you’ve got enough computational power and storage up there, it might turn out better I guess.
I do think Duolingo helped me a lot with this kind of basic exposure to basic context, started it about a month after I started WK and kept doing both every day. Seemed like a valuable and at the same time uncomplicated step towards more natural and real language use.
I’m lucky to have a lot of free time, despite going near full speed at WK I manage to go through a significant amount of Japanese content outside of this website which helps cement and contextualize what I learn here. I spend about three hours daily studying Japanese, sometimes more.
I also know 3 other foreign languages, so I feel like I’ve become pretty efficient at cramming vocabulary and grammar. I think that with this experience I can “feel” when I’m going too fast and I need to spend more time on something, and so far my Wanikani pace feels fine. I have well over 90% retention in my burn reviews which tells me that I’m not forgetting the early level stuff (yet).
I’m starting to burn out a little bit though, and I feel like I should increase my reading practice, but I think I can maintain this until level 40.