The most amazing aspect of Flaming Durtles is the ability to do reviews offline and then have it sync when you are back online. Not possible via the mobile web experience alone. Everything else is sugar on top of that fundamental feature you can only get with a dedicated app.
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I don’t understand why they can’t just make a separate thing from WaniKani and call it something else and that’s where the kana only vocabulary goes. Like to me WaniKani is for learning Kanji and vocabulary that contain those kanji within them.
Adding more and more kana vocabulary would only slow down my process as well.
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Yeah that’s what I was thinking too! If they had a separate website for kana only vocabulary I think that would be amazing! Trying to smush kana only vocabulary into WaniKani a platform known for learning kanji and vocabulary that contains those kanji doesn’t make any sense.
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I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to work out how to spoof the API responses and so have managed to get the sample kana data confirmed working in the beta version of Smoulding Durtles.
It shows up as a radical right now, but this is purely just because I’ve managed to somehow miss a couple of UI elements. Not sure how, given how comprehensive of a search I did for any permutation of vocabulary or radical, but que sera.
Correctly showing up with meaning, mnemonics, context sentences, etc. and all the other data the API provides:
Once I’ve resolved for the formatting issue I’ll post an updated beta to the github and create a thread for the app - hopefully Scott will get back to me regarding some testing access to I can run it agains the real API, but this at least confirms that the app definitely accepts the data without erroring out 
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For you maybe, but personally I only started using it because I wanted undo, reorder and other QoL features and I felt like using scripts was too fragile and likely to break.
If WK supported reorder and undo out of the box I don’t think I’d use any third party program. Although I must say that I would be sad to lose Flaming Durtle’s search function which is massively better than the website’s.
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Out of curiosity do you know how stock Flaming Durtles would handle these entries? Does it break completely, ignore them or something else?
This honestly feels like a ‘Make people stay here longer/spend more money’ idea as it will now take users longer to learn kanji with kana words now being added. What I don’t understand is why can’t you guys make a separate website that teaches kana vocabulary only so then those will are interested would join there. There you can have not only a WaniKani subscription but then a secondary website just for kana only and have a subscription there.
You and the rest of the WaniKani team not knowing whether this is will make third party apps like flaming durtles and tsurukame usable anymore is not a good sign. User scripts and third party apps are the only reason people use WaniKani. WaniKani just isn’t usable on it’s own which says a lot right there.
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Looking through the code, I’m not sure. The database is pretty well structured, but I know that:
- An item with an unknown subject_type would show as a WANIKANI_RADICAL
- Radicals and Kana both share the same assignment types
- Radicals have stroke data and kana do not
Best case, they’d work, but just show up as radicals (which is largely what is happening right now, except that they’re getting correctly filed in the database as kana_vocabulary, not radicals, or they’d not show up at all.
The code contradicts itself in how it defaults out, so radicals are the default fallback for subject_types, but vocabulary is the default fallback for all formatting, so it’s hard to tell.
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Ok, I guess it’s lucky if they’re treated as radicals since they’re effectively handled the same way (with meaning but no reading).
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If tsurukame (third part iOS app) stops working for me I’ll just stop learning on WK. I’ll only do the burned items and reviews here while continuing my learning journey on MaruMori.io
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I definitely don’t want them to make a separate website. I like the idea of having kana only stuff on wanikani so I don’t have to juggle between different websites, which is what I do now. I understand that some people don’t want kana only vocabulary, so maybe an opt out in the settings is indeed the best solution to keep everybody happy. But definitely not more website or additional decks or anything like that. It would compromise the beautiful simplicity of the platform.
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Yeah, quite.
I did worry for a second that my beta version is just falling back to radical and I put in all this work for nothing, but nope, it’s in the DB correctly:
This means I’m fairly confident all the features will work as expected and I should be able to fix the card type soon, because I think it’s this section is at fault, the red being the new line I’ve just added in:
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I feel it would be better if they make it a separate thing from WK like a separate website or separate section that does not mix in with the kanji reviews. Like you said this website for years has been known for learning kanji so that’s what I’ve come here to do. Learn kanji. Kana vocabulary on the side or different website is okay, but forcing it in with the kanji and kanji vocabulary just makes no sense to me.
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Maybe the third party apps would be kind enough in making a separate kana vocabulary track and leave the kanji track online. They have quite a bit of kanji that they could add so I wish they focused on filling that gap first and then do the kana vocabulary, but separately from the kanji section.
Perhaps a separate section for kana only within the WaniKani website then? I don’t like the idea of kana vocabulary being mushed into kanji and kanji vocabulary, but if there was some kind of separate section before the Extra Study section I’d be okay with that.
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In my opinion if the total number of kana entries is below ~300 and spread throughout the course it won’t add enough of a workload to matter. We’re talking about ~5 additional entries per level. I don’t think it’s really useful for WK but I also doubt that it’s going to impact my learning routine significantly (assuming that Flaming Durtles remains usable…).
I wish the resources it took to implement this were instead used to develop features and add content I care about, but I also don’t think it’s worth fighting this change personally.
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I don’t speedrun either. I enjoy going slow and taking my time learning the kanji. Just wish the kana only vocabulary would be in a separate section/track. I agree having it all together would be disruptive and WaniKani would actually end to change their marketing message too. Lol
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I’m assuming it’s going to be more than that. I know they said for now it’s 60 and releasing 10 per week, but this is just the beginning. Can’t see them stopping at 60 only kana vocabulary. I feel they are going to add more and more kana vocabulary and it’s only to be more than 300. I agree that just adding 60 isn’t going to slow down progress too much, but I feel like they are going to keep adding more and more eventually getting to over 1000 cause why not? Whatever they can do to make it take longer to get to level 60 (which I wouldn’t mind if it’s more kanji and kanji vocabulary).
I just wish the kana only vocabulary would be in a separate section or track.
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I say let’s wait and see what the selection looks like and where it’s going. Honestly I wonder if there’s really all that much elementary kana-only vocab to add in the first place? After all WK already contains a bunch of vocab that’s usually written in kana but it’s taught through the kanji (like 居る, 未だ, 又 or 有る for instance).
On the other hand the learning order is a bit messed up for vocab, like 居る is taught at level 25 when learners will certainly want to learn いる long before. So is WK going to double these entries, having a kana-only and then the kanji version later?
Things like these is really why I think WK can’t really work for a pure vocab learning solution. It’s not really designed for it (and that’s fine IMO, I’m here to learn kanji).
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I don’t care whether they add this new vocab or not, but I’m not really understanding why you need to risk breaking 3rd party apps at all? Is there a good reason to not just add the new vocab as the same vocab card that already exists? Yeah, you’ll have to type in a kana input for an all-kana word which is pretty obvious, but that will take like 3 seconds, and is frankly barely deviant from already mostly kana vocab that exists like アメリカ人 and ナポレオン三世
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