Kana Vocab

[fallynleaf]

@Ski13

They should teach it by frequency. with the 250 most frequent kanji covers around 60% of the written language. the first 1000 is roughly 90% 1500 is 95% and so on. frequency makes the most sense if they want to make it about reading. which i think would be the correct thing to do

Frequency in what? Light novels? Manga? Newspapers? Pro wrestling magazines?

[Ski13]

I would assume we all understand that there is no perfect frequency list. And that there are some generalities in my post. But it is possible to build lists that encompass the various sources. For example for the work i do in Foreign Policy and News, I would have a slightly different list than say a light novel reader. But there is going to be a great deal of overlap between newspapers and light novels. Probably less so with wrestling magazines. I am going to see 政 (politics/government) far more than a light novel reader but you will also see it. For me it would probably be in the top 100 or 200, for you it might be 500. Also all of the frequency lists i have seen look pretty similar give or take a kanji here and there

[Sulax]

In clown magazines…

[Vanilla]

@Ski13

frequency makes the most sense if they want to make it about reading. which i think would be the correct thing to do

Sorting by frequency makes the most sense, sure, but I think two pitfalls are going by unnoticed

1. Frequency is highly context dependent past the first couple thousand words. And the further you go, the more it matters.

2. The real important part for reading isn’t kanji, it’s words. So the goal shouldn’t be any “% coverage” of kanji because that doesn’t really mean anything. They would need to focus on words, which would probably mean kanji are introduced only as they are needed.

[Tooko]

I was going to post this a while ago, but the Kana only threads seemed to disappear from my feed so I left it. Since they’re coming back, here’s my thoughts:
BTW, the tl;dr version is I am against the kana only additions, but I also hate the “people should already know this” arguement.

I’m currently doing a BSci in Astrophysics and Computer Science. I just finished my final exam for a third year CS programming unit (C++). When that unit started talking about variables, it began with what variables are, how int’s differ from floats, how computers don’t natively know strings of characters etc. Now not only is this a third year CS unit, but you have to have done two programming units as prerequisites to qualify for this course. Therefore explaining the basics of what a variable is is simply a waste. At that point you’ve already been required to know the IEEE standard on floating point variables, so why does this unit begin with describing at a basic level what they are?

So I’ve been e-mailing one of my professors back and forth about some research and I mentioned this. The bulk of the e-mail was about something completely unrelated, so he only gave a one line answer to this question, which I found quite comical, but also completely summed it up. And I quote: “Why would you start anywhere but the beginning?”

It’s true that the WK philosophy has always been to teach kanji, and i think that’s what it should stick with. But to say they’re stupid additions because (quoting this thread):

@Hasumi

Anyone that turns open the first page of a Japanese beginner textbook should know…

@Mrs_Diss

• i’m reading native texts every day, it’s insulting to require me to grind through such super trivial words.

@Ski13

If you are learning kanji I am willing to bet your audience knows what こんにちは means

@Hermanov

I’ve already learned these such a basic words from very first chapters of Genki 1

They’re only basic for people who already know them. We all have to start at the beginning at some point. While I’m completely against the kana additions, I think it’s just plain elitist to claim that these are so basic they don’t need to be taught.
We were all taught these in the beginning
And the beginning is exactly where they’re starting.

Yes they should be optional if they need to be here at all, but then what we’re asking for is optionality on what is currently a completely new feature. Requesting new features for something that is in itself a new feature is probably pushing it a bit.

[Tooko]

@Me

Whole lotta crap

Ok this turned into much more of a rant than I wanted. Hopefully my point is made in there somewhere.

Apologies.

[Vanilla]

@Tooko

And I quote: “Why would you start anywhere but the beginning?”

“A 3rd year course is not the start”

Setting aside the thread, that feels like a terrible response that misses the entire essence of “picking up where you left off”. I wonder if he doesn’t use bookmarks and just rereads books from the beginning every time he puts them down and picks them back up. He probably just wanted to sound slick with a one liner, I imagine.

[pabbles]

The more feelings-based type of posts have started at least a week after the changes, plus you have to consider the entire time it was announced in the dev forums as a api-only thing. I was half-expecting to be among your callout-ees, but I guess I’ve only hearted every comment that communicated “I feel insulted by this” and raged vicariously through them

100% placid civility and purely logical arguments get slowly eroded after weeks upon weeks of no response / non-responses from the WK team. We’re at the stage of memeing and playing a little looser with our feelings now

I feel most people who don’t even have any interest in Japan know “Konnichiwa” means “hello”. I kick my Connie Chihuahuas with “k”

[pm215]

@Ski13

They should teach it by frequency. with the 250 most frequent kanji covers around 60% of the written language. the first 1000 is roughly 90% 1500 is 95% and so on. frequency makes the most sense if they want to make it about reading. which i think would be the correct thing to do

The thing about a frequency order is that it conflicts with wanting to teach kanji A before kanji B where A appears as a subpart of B – so ideally you teach 動 before 働, and so on. Sometimes you get lucky and the simpler-shaped kanji is also higher-frequency, but sometimes you don’t. Heisig RTK takes a view very heavily on the “teach parts before using them” end of the spectrum. WK doesn’t go that far but it does I think try to account for both frequency and logical order. I don’t think a pure frequency order would be easy to learn at all.

[Nirgan]

@pm215

ideally you teach 動 before 働, and so on.

Love that throwback to when Vanilla suggested to swap those two because 動 is not only simpler, but also more common.
Adding こんにちは took priority before trying to improve the kanji teaching process i guess.

@Ski13

They should teach it by frequency. with the 250 most frequent kanji covers around 60% of the written language. the first 1000 is roughly 90% 1500 is 95% and so on. frequency makes the most sense if they want to make it about reading. which i think would be the correct thing to do

Teaching kanji by frequency sounds good on paper, but it for sure wouldnt work for me or majority of people. If i saw 議 on level 1 i would probably think learning kanji is impossible, but seeing 言 羊 手 kanji before that made it much easier to learn, despite 議 being more common than those three.
WK does decent job of compromising simplicity and frequency as is, it just needs slight adjustments like the 動 働 swap or maybe somewhat lowering level of some very common kanji despite their complexity.

Also by the way, 60% does sounds impressive, but it is actually so low that its unreadable anyways, plus most very common words arent usually very descriptive (like the 議 i mentioned), so understanding them usually helps less with understanding the text than some rarer (but still common) kanji. By the point you reach about 90% where reading starts to be viable (just my opinion), youve seen all the most very common ones anyways.

[Vanilla]

@pm215

I don’t think a pure frequency order would be easy to learn at all.

I agree, but I don’t think that means frequency is a bad idea, just that that implementation of frequency is a bad idea. What I would personally do would look at making the first 2000 words roughly match the first 2000 kanji containing words in a frequency list. Then the same for the next 2000-3000, and so on. That way you still have a good amount of wiggle room for ordering while still teaching the 2000 most common words so that people will have the best shot when they start getting into reading at level 20 or so.

This would at least save you from the current system where there are several words not even in the top 10k in the free first 3 levels…including one on level 2 not even in the top 20k and one on level 3 almost in the top 70k that I’ve never heard of (and the first google result is wanikani for lol). I

[WeebPotato]

That sort of re-arranging would mess up everyone’s currently running SRS schedules, but from a broader perspective might be more useful than teaching absolute beginner kana-only words.

[Vanilla]

Yeah I don’t necessarily mean wanikani should just shift it 今更 all at once, but thats what I think the best approach is for teaching wanikani style. They really dug themselves in such a hole with the initial vocab selection and order, though. Their new stated goal is to teach for reading fluency, but I think its a very slim chance they ever end up doing that effectively honestly. But they could probably go from bad to alright with some slow minor shifts over time. In fact, they are kinda already doing that if you look at the general movement of vocabulary in updates.

[WeebPotato]

@Vanilla

They really dug themselves in such a hole with the initial vocab selection and order, though. Their new stated goal is to teach for reading fluency, but I think its a very slim chance they ever end up doing that effectively honestly.

Yeah, when I wrote about it earlier in this thread, as soon as WaniKani decided (?) to switch from kanji-only to a focus on reading fluency, there is N things that would need to be heavily refactored, bit-by-bit for the task to be achievable. Which as pessimistic as I am, is still achievable, but not with the current approach.

@Vanilla

But they could probably go from bad to alright with some slow minor shifts over time. In fact, they are kinda already doing that if you look at the general movement of vocabulary in updates.

I think eventually we’ll get there, but it’s gonna take a lot of pain and sweat . I could maybe wait for when it’s done and do another run of WaniKani from the beginning.

[Mrs_Diss]

moving items in WK levels doesn’t have to mess up the SRS schedules. once an item is in the review queue, WK could simply ignore the WK level of the item.

…which is what they currently do when they move items (i wasn’t sure, but i looked in WKstats and see items at various SRS levels in much higher WK levels)

[Aikibujin]

When was the last time a mod actually addressed any of these issues?

And yeah, I tried it, and I do not like the additional kana only words. They waste my time and pad my correct totals, so it’s more time consuming to see how well I am doing (you know using mods to show me my total percent correct as the native one was removed and still hasn’t been replaced). Would at least like an opt out function or the autoburn ability as mentioned here.

[boredatfluor]

I just started learning Japanese about a month ago, and using WK just over a week. I read their announcement post and I think it is a good idea as it allows me to learn more words at no inconvenience. It is implemented into the same website I learn kanji and I love this website. Someone else replied saying if you know the words so well, it won’t take long to burn them and shouldn’t be a big deal. Why not answer a few easy words every now and then when trying to become fluent? You can see the fruit of your labor and how far you have come. IDK, I am only level 1.

[Fryie]

@Tooko

While I’m completely against the kana additions, I think it’s just plain elitist to claim that these are so basic they don’t need to be taught.

I don’t think anybody is suggesting that those things shouldn’t be taught. I didn’t know what それ means before I started learning Japanese.

Some people are questioning whether items you’re going to see basically every time you engage with Japanese, or which generally aren’t hard to learn, need to go through the whole SRS process. I don’t think that everything should be learned through SRS.

And even more people, like you, wouldn’t mind the additions if they were optional.

[simias]

That’s specifically not what WK purports to do though, it wants to teach elementary components first to make it easier to decompose more complex characters later. That’s why 了 is taught so early for instance. The reasoning is outlined in this tofugu article.

I think that’s a great idea personally, and actually I’ve even complained on these forums that I think WK doesn’t push the concept far enough as it is: It feels like WK somewhat loses its way partway through

For instance today at level 34 I’ve been taught 射 while 謝 was taught at level 13. I wish WK had taught them the other way around, frequency be damned, because it would have made it easier to remember the realtively complicated 謝 kanji. They also share the onyomi (something that WaniKani dosen’t point out, preferring some nonsense English-based mnemonic).