I definitely beg to differ. I think teaching kana-only words makes perfect sense and I love the feature, it has been requested for years and I’m happy they finally got around including it. I just hope they cover more (a lot more, as in thousands!) words, and cover more challenging ones as well as the basic ones they already started including.
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By the way is ふわふわ really an オノマトペ? It has nothing to do with the sound.
Japanese has a lot of these non-sound symbolic words (擬態語), and from my understanding they are typically bundled with what in English we’d call onomatopoeia. For what it’s worth, the Japanese Wikipedia page associated with the English onomatopoeia page (titled 擬声語) includes information about both the sound and non-sound versions. It’s certainly not one to one, but I feel it’s reasonable to bundle them with the term “onomatopoeia” given the Japanese usage.
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Yes, but the sound needs to be at the origin of the word, then it can be used for other meanings. After some searching maybe the origin of ふわふわ is a sound of something “passing or causing to pass gently through the air”, like flapping wings?
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That’s ひらひら or パタパタ. ふわふわ is when you step on or touch something soft like animal fur or carpet, or when something is gently floating. It could be the sound of the thing itself, it could be an emotion behind it.
I don’t know what’s the exact etymology of ふわふわ.
By the way, a little trivia - Japanese onomatopoeia are very instinctive. My teacher had a student in class who would associate a very non-Japanese onomatopoeia with drizzling rain, because that’s the kind of sound that came to his mind. Other students gave a variety of answers.
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My first association of ふわふわ is eating a chiffon cake 
it would be interesting to find out what is actually at the origin. I guess we can have different onomatopeia for the same thing, even regionally, it’s a fun part of the language
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Such a beautiful word although I don’t want kana-only words in my reviews, this one made me smile!
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Onomatopeias really take me back 
First time time I tried to use one, I roughly translated the (written comic) onotomatopeia from my own language, to a Japanese pronounciations.
I ended up saying. The karaage was so good, and ‘sounds of mast******n’
Everyone in the student room cracked up, and I couldn’t even understand why
Anyway. I looked at this tread to say:
Batch of kana lesson → feral internal screaming and screeching
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It’s funny how in one of our last interactions you complained about people attacking the staff or people who like the update, and here you are, attacking a user who decides that they don’t need to learn a particular word. The reasons for why they don’t want to do so (e.g. because they already know it) shouldn’t matter to you.
It’s almost like it’s only toxic when it’s the other side doing it.
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The user literally asked the community why he should want to learn that word. If they didn’t want an answer they shouldn’t have asked. Giving an answer to a question is hardly ‘attacking’.
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You know as well as I do that that was a rhetorical question.
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I suppose that’s the issue with this type of questions: someone might actually want to answer them. If one doesn’t want an answer they’re better off not asking a question in the first place, rhetorical or otherwise. That being said the point stands: answering to a question does not constitute an ‘attack’. In fact I think it is a deescalation, as the tone of the response was a lot more polite and civil than the post where such question was asked.
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That’s on them.
From the context of the post it’s clear that the user wanted to express their frustration with having to learn a word that to them is not worth SRSing.
Even so, a more constructive response could have been something like “I think learning such words is important because they’re different enough from the English version” or some such, but instead they got a snark. I don’t see how that can be considered “polite” or “de-escalating”.
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I am thinking of something like 上 or 浮く, with sound change to ふ. Incidentally, On’yomi for 浮 is ふ.
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Can you explain a bit more? What is this non-Japanese onomatopoeia that he associated with drizzling rain? Is it something like an engine sound?
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I think it was パチパチ, because to him rain would make a pachi pachi sound. My teacher explained that it’s しょぼしょぼ instead.
Engine would be ロロ or ゴロゴロ I guess? Onomatopoeia are as arcane to me 
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I’m generally against the kana-words, but this is one of the better ones. Onomatope is such a fundamental part of the language, that including it it’s a good way to showcase the prevalence of it. Some katakana exposure is also pretty neat to have. This is certainly not a word you have “to go out of your way” to learn, but a pretty essential one.
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I thought it was a non-Japanese onomatopoeia? パチパチ sounds very Japanese to me 
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Oh wait I get it now. You’re saying that the teacher asked students what the onomatopoeia for drizzling rain would be and this student answered, “パチパチ”, which is non-Japanese (or at least not the Japanese onomatope for drizzling rain). Sorry I’m slow today.
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onomatopoeia is a loan word from French (if I’m not mistaken)
with kanji you could even learn (and thanks to kanji understand some of the meaning)
擬声語、擬音語、擬態語、擬情語
of course the loan word makes it much simpler to cover them all…
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