Leap and leaping

Hi everybody!

I have a quick question that I was hoping someone could help me with:

Although the words 跳躍 and 飛躍 have similar meanings, Wanikani says that the former is leap, but the latter is leaping – the “ing” must be there, or it will be marked wrong.

Why is that?

4 Likes

@mods can you add these synonyms?

6 Likes

I don’t know, but I got these wrong so many times…

4 Likes

Just a matter of how the word is taught, I guess, and possibly an oversight in entering synonyms/meanings. I’d add a synonym for both, if the mods don’t beat you to it.

跳躍 has other meanings besides leaping/jumping, but in the sense of leaping, they’re synonyms. Goo even lists 跳躍 as a meaning/synonym for 飛躍:

跳躍:はねあがること。とびあがること。ジャンプ。
飛躍:飛び上がること。跳躍。

6 Likes

Interesting. I fully expected to be missing some obscure grammar point here, and was already in the process of coming up with my own mnemonic to help me remember which one has “ing” and which one doesn’t… :sweat_smile:

Good to know, and even better if it helps future Wanikaners not agonize over it.

1 Like

When in doubt, it’s good to check a dictionary, preferably a monolingual one.

In the end WaniKani just matches your input to what’s in their list of accepted answers, which is flawed to begin with since it’s all translations for out-of-context words so it’s never going to cover every possible nuance. Ideally it’d always be consistent and complete, but that’s not a reasonable expectation for anything built by humans :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2 Likes

Hey Plantron! Thanks for the tag! I will pass this along to the team so we can take a look at this.

3 Likes

Whenever I see something like this, I just add “ing” to the English meaning or a synonym to cover for the fact that the noun expresses an action (for instance, “enlistment” vs “enlist” which doesn’t seem correct in general). That’s how I understand する compounds.

That’s not universal of course, because 緊張, for instance, expresses a state of being nervous (nervousness). Still, worth checking whether the word is a する compound or not.

They’re now added!

3 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.