My thoughts, tips, and ramblings after reaching level 60 — long post

Thank you~

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!

I just started using WaniKani, and although I’m still at the very beginning, I’m already starting to see some of the issues you pointed out, so I’m definitely taking your advice into consideration, especially regarding mnemonics.

I wonder if people who have English as their second or third language struggle more with the default mnemonics? :thinking:

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No, personally I don’t think so

But it depends on your current level of English I guess

It’s easier to create your own mnemonics in Portuguese, since the sounds in both languages are closer to one another, when compared to English :slight_smile:
É mais fácil fazer as tuas próprias mnemónicas em Português, visto que os sons em ambas as línguas são parecidos :heart: Bem-vinda!

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Obrigada! ポルトガル人 represent! :portugal:

My English level is pretty good, I think. Even though it’s my second language, I really do use it more often than Portuguese most of the time, outside of work.

I guess I just can’t relate to some mnemonics, but I also see there are some userscripts that allow you to see community submitted mnemonics! :open_mouth:

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:portugal:

Take into consideration that the mnemonics are just there to support you. They aren’t 100% obligatory for kanji and vocabulary. SRS does a fantastic job already with memorization. Not to mention that the same mnemonic will work differently for different people.

There’s this script, though I’ve never used it:

(check the latest comments - seems like the original isn’t working as planned, but there seems to be a fix)

Qualquer coisa, pergunta :v:

I just want to complain about words like 怠慢 and 怠惰 both fucking radicals mean “lazy” and yet they mean different things and ive been getting this shit wrong for months. i think my brain is just unable to continue remembering

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Thank you so much for this post. I’ve only started off with wanikani last week, and I had doubts, but I cannot believe how much progress I’ve made since starting, and it’s awesome to see a post from someone so much farther along!

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Nailbat is now fingers btw

“fingers” has some awesome potential for mnemonics, but they’d be NSFW

That is crazy, I just got into WaniKani and after reading your story I am inspired to do the same

Thank you. I read your whole post. For me mnemonics work sometimes. A lot of the time I end up learning a kanji only, so that’s fine. I am only level one, and have previous experience with Japanese (3 years in high school, one semester in college). My grammar is OK and I have retained most of my Japanese from half a life ago, maybe because I have always had a smartphone, operating system, game console, and any game in Japanese menus. My weakness has always been kanji, as I never actively learnt any Japanese after that one college course, but did learn Spanish conversationally and dabbled a bit in Korean (reading the ‘alphabet’ only) and Cantonese (speaking only).

I have been on level one for for several days and noticed you flew by yours. Maybe it takes longer to start out at the moment. One test told me to wait seven days. I am excited to push my Japanese past the N5/N4 level I’ve been stuck at forever.

あなたのストーリーのためにありがとう。
(my fave kanji word is 天邪鬼)

same here, restarting wanikani from scratch after a 3 year break. Good luck :slight_smile:

I’ve done most of the things you put in your thread, except that I regard to get mnemonics the shortest possible, to save ‘memory space’. The one thing that makes me suffer the most is some on’yomis in which I didn’t applied the mentioned tricks.
giphy-2

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Same for me. Sometimes I think of this post and wish I’d followed the advice better.

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Brand newbie here! It was really encouraging to read your post today, to see where I’m heading and how to strategize getting there. Thank you so much, and congrats!

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nice, good job

Hi Vargsvan, since I am a newbie to this journey, and really excited, I would like to know is this course of learning kanji completely free? Can I reach level 60 even without paying a penny? Sorry, if my question sounds stupid, but as of now I have not come across even a single community that teaches so much of Kanji for free.
Thank you.
Cheers

The first three levels are free. After that your options are monthly subscription for $9, yearly for $89, or lifetime access for $299.

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Secret option number 4, wait for Christmas/New Year and get lifetime for $199. Bit far off though, in February.