Is it a viable and sensible strategy to learn all kanji from levels 1-60 first and then go back and learn all vocabulary? As long as I burn them all I should remember them all.
4 Likes
Why would you want to do it this way? Seems very inefficient.
Extreme doubt. If you don’t read and get repeated exposure to those kanji regularly you’ll definitely forget many of them.
As you get further into the levels you’ll find more and more kanji that are only used in a handful of common words, sometimes only one. In these cases it makes even less sense to learn the kanji without accompanying vocab.
4 Likes
I feel like it would help a lot with reading practice. I like to be able to know how everything sounds phonetically and it would aid a lot with looking up unfamiliar words early. I’d also probably be able to guess a lot of the meanings of words earlier on.
That makes somes sense, but I definitely wouldn’t go to level 60 like this, the kanji in the 2nd half of the course can be pretty niche and it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to learn them on their own without specific vocab IMO.
But more generally I wonder how well you’ll remember the kanji if you don’t study any vocab. WaniKani’s vocabulary is not just about learning the words, it’s about practicing the kanji more.
1 Like
the vocab reinforces the multiple readings of the kanji so it has a purpose each level. whether or not all the vocab in and of itself are useful in daily use such as reading the news, books etc is another debate entirely at times.
2 Likes
Broadly speaking, this doesn’t work very well. There is more than one reading for kanji, plus there’s rendaku, so while you can make some good guesses about how to pronounce words in many cases it’s a long way from 100%. This is why WK teaches vocab items.
The other problem is how long it will take you to learn even just all the kanji readings and meanings. If this was a one or two month task, that would be one thing, but it isn’t, unfortunately. So it works much better to learn all of kanji and vocab and grammar in parallel, so that you can at least make a start on understanding easier texts sooner rather than later. (The proportions in which you work on these things will vary as you go along.)
3 Likes
kanji are pretty useless if you don’t have a grasp on grammar. You might be able to know some and guess some but in most cases you’d be wrong. With grammar on the other hand even if you don’t know the kanji you’re are able tell what function it has in the sentence, so you can have some clue about what’s going on. It’s better to learn a little of everything than trying to master just one part of Japanese.
Learning the kanji as a lone item is more about dealing with radicals as a concept than actually learning the kanji, you are better off learning words than just kanji, because that’s the most useful way to remember them and, well, using them to read and speak and write etc.
1 Like
I think that would be counter-productive. The reason I think that is sometimes the reading helps you remember the vocabulary, but sometimes it’s the other way around. It would be a lot harder for me to remember arbitrary associations of sounds with symbols if I didn’t have a “A like in Apple” example.
Just happened to me a few minutes ago. 秘 - what’s the reading. Oh easy, like in 秘密, a common word that I already know. In this case, I know the word from elsewhere, but that’s what WK’s vocabulary words do - give you at least one word, sometimes a couple for different readings, so you can do what I just did. It’s self-reinforcing.
If you want to go on brute-force memorizing them, I’m sure that’s possible. But I think it will be harder, not easier.
2 Likes
Do you already speak Japanese and are now learning to read? If yes, I think what you are proposing is a sensible approach. If you don’t already speak Japanese, I agree with the other posters, and it’s not going to work the way you think it will.
An example: WK teaches the meaning of the kanji 扇 as fan and the reading as せん.
Given that info, can you guess the readings of 扇 (vocabulary), 扇ぐ, 扇子, and 団扇? Additional info: WK teaches the kanji 子 (level 2) as child with readings し and す, and 団 (level 19) as group with readings だん and とん.
If you already know these words in spoken Japanese, then I’m almost certain you would be able to read these words by just knowing the kanji meaning. But if you don’t, you won’t have any chance of guessing the readings of 3 out of 4.
Here are the readings:
扇 = おうぎ
扇ぐ = あおぐ
扇子 = せんす
団扇 = うちわ
How many did you guess correctly? I failed the review for 扇子 this morning, which is why this example came to mind. It’s the only one you could guess, but I missed its review thinking it was rendaku’d, a mistake someone who can speak Japanese wouldn’t make.
7 Likes
generally speaking you learn stuff better in context imho
6 Likes