Kanji, vocabulary that look alike (way to much for my brain to differentiate them)

Just wanted to share the trouble I had learning some of the kanji vocabulary on Wanikani.so
let’s start shall we :slight_smile:
(You can share the ones you had trouble as well in the comment if you want ) :slight_smile:

Radical:

Leaf and gun: When we look at it they look pretty different but when I have 150 review to do I always mess up those two./

Triceratops and horn : I just a idiot I think :confused:

Bed and snake: For me the snake look like the bed and the bed like the snake ( Igave up and just added snake in bed’s synonym and bed in snake’s synonym)

Grain jet and sickle. again, I’m just an idiot.

Kanji

左 and 右 (Left and right); even if I manage now to differenciate them I’m still hesitating too much for some reason:/

失 and 矢:(fault and arrow) this one bothered me for a long time, now I just look a the small line sticking out of the top to tell them apart.

札 and 礼 : (bill and thank) For some reason my eyes are only attracted to the ‘‘umbrella’’ part of the kanji, leading to constant mistakes.

Vocabulary

休止 and 中止 :(pause and suspension) Mistake 休止 for 中止 sometime.

正直 and 直行 : (honest and nonstop) mistake 直行 for 正直 EVERYTIME

交わるand 交じる: (to intersect and to mix)

And for now this mostly all of it :smiley::smiley:

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omg leaf and gun are also the bane of my existence :persevere:

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下がる (to fall) and 下げる (to lower). I got these two mixed up for a while . . . and there’s also 上がる (to rise) and 上げる (to raise)!

Whose bright idea was it to make the definitions and the vowel sounds so similar? :thinking:

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I keep messing up 変人 for 恋人. I just want to answer こいびと fast and keep forgetting to look at the radicals! here’s hoping that complaining here will make me finally stop making the same mistake over and over :joy:

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Don’t worry, it gets worse :upside_down_face:

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THIS. ahhh its so aggravating sometimes :rage:

They sound similar because they are similar :stuck_out_tongue:

These actually follow a pattern you’ll see a lot! える sounds are often used in transitive verbs. Verbs where you move or affect something else. Granted that rule can depend on the consonant sound that precedes it (げる is, oddly enough, one of the sounds that is more of a toss-up). But ある sounds (like がる) are basically always intransitive. Self-moving. Self-contained verbs. So 上がる is to rise. 上げる is to raise something else up.

That may not help at the moment if you’re being introduced to the idea, but it is a trend you’ll hopefully catch on to. If you know that ある as a verb is “to be”, which is itself intransitive, it might help the association. That’s not a coincidence, by the way.

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YES! I just got 40% on my last review because I keep getting those two confused lol

Ahh, most of the ones you mentioned really resonate with me. I mess them up too!

Another one for me is 本日, I always think it’s 日本 when I first see it @_@. I don’t think this in WaniKani actually, but I come across it in other reading.

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Mine were cow 牛 and noon 午. I didn’t even notice the little barb at the top until I was actually writing it down. It was a big DOH moment for me.

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Thanks for the explanation! It makes sense that the words I mentioned follow a trend. Now I just have to remember them . . .

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It’s a feature, not a bug

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