Hi all.
I was going through my vocabulary and got the lesson for 空手. I feel like the mnemonic isn’t the best it could be. While the reading is painfully easy to remember–it’s the same as the word–the alternative mnemonic isn’t the best to me.
It reads as follows
…as long as you know the meaning, the reading should be easy, but here’s a mnemonic to help you just in case.
Karate comes from (から) Japan!
While the mnemonic does work, the grammar point of から being from hasn’t been introduced in WK yet–searching “から” and “from” brings no such result. Hopefully one would know it anyways around this level, but I don’t feel like it’s the best idea to introduce a mnemonic playing with untaught ideas (in WK).
I can’t think of a better mnemonic as of writing this (if one’s even necessary since it’s the same as the meaning) but I wanted to express my concern anyways.
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Yeah, WaniKani doesn’t do grammar. They made a start at introducing some kana-only terms, but there was enough griping about it that I guess they lost interest and stopped. Though not sufficient loss of interest to do anything about the handful that they did add.
から is one of the standard kun’yomi readings for 空, though it means “empty” when it takes that reading, hence 空手 = empty hand. WaniKani lists から among the kun’yomi for the kanji, and mentions that the kanji also means “empty”, but with the focus on on’yomi in the lesson, it never makes the direct connection. It comes up in other words like 空車, “vacant taxi”, which can be read as からぐるま, and is the etymology behind カラオケ, though that’s typically spelt in katakana.
But yeah, having some trouble thinking of a better mnemonic too. WaniKani generally tries to avoid having words be the mnemonic for themselves, but honestly, sometimes that just might be the way to go, especially if it’s become a loanword in English.
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