New People Questions! ~~~<3 [Lost?! Confused?! We're here to help!]

You have given me much to think about. I especially appreciate the advice to think about the specific question/problem I’m having. That’s been very helpful to recalibrate my expectations. I’ll be reading the threads you shared!

Oh. How do I learn languages? Spoken/immersion. Going from the audio to the written word is not so hard when using the familiar alphabetic system. My spoken Japanese isn’t that strong right now either, so that may be another recalibration for me.

Thank you so much!

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Thank you for this! I have a feeling that this will be very helpful!

Going to add on here - the sounds sticking gets much better as you learn more kanji and more Japanese because the types of sound combinations that are frequent/likely are more salient in your brain. E.g. after many kanji that sound like ‘しょう’, it’s easier to associate that sound with a new kanji because you’re more used to that being a sound that goes with kanji. At least, that’s what I’ve found as I progress. It can definitely happen at the start that all of the sounds feel random and not at all like words or word parts. I found things sticking better as my vocabulary of Japanese words that I had heard/learned grew a bit so I had a better feeling for common sounds.

I also found on early levels I needed to study more to get things to stick - I did writing things down during lessons a lot more then - again, I think part of my brain getting better at learning Kanji over time.

Finally, I’m sure you know this, but especially after you first learn an item (or generally when it’s at Apprentice 1), it’s really ideal to hit that 4 hour review interval to help get it to stick a bit better in your brain. If you can’t (because of work, life schedule, whatever), you might want a quick way to review the kanji at that shorter than 12 hour interval - e.g. a flash card for the new words that you look at 1-2 times between the lesson and the first review; a note on your phone with the kanji etc. Some people note that they really need a lesson, 1 hr review, and then the 4 hour review, so review their lessons about an hour after taking them to help things stick. Obviously ability to do this varies based on your life schedule, but it might be helpful.

Good luck!

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I wonder if you might do better spending more time listening to Japanese before starting kanji. If you can build up an auditory vocabulary, where even if you don’t always know the meaning you can recognize words when you hear them, it allows you to use that when learning kanji (and vocabulary) readings. A lot of the time the way I learn a kanji reading is remembering the word it’s a part of. For example, the way I remember the reading for 才 is by remembering that it’s the さい in てんさい.

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Completely mundane but why does my level username ball thing not change to 9 if I already have all the level 9 kanji on apprentice?

Did you try with logout and then login again?

With the new updates you can also set it to a fixed number now in your preferences here in the forums. Did you maybe (accidentally) activated it?

Man, that sounds like a really hard task! Hope it’s possible. From my experience I’d compare learning kango as a non native without learning the kanji to chinese bamboo torture

I had that same reaction to the level 10 email. Lesson to burn, if you don’t miss a review, is about six months. I certainly wasn’t working at record pace, but my burns were months away when I got that message. Maybe the average time to level ten is pretty long?

I’ve just started with Wanikani, and one question I have is what is the easiest way to go back and review kanji/vocab that you forgot or failed while you are doing reviews. So far I’ve had a second tab open in my browser and have just been searching for the forgotten item in the list of kanji/vocab on the site… but I feel like once I get to a higher level this will become very inconvenient (it’s already slightly annoying and I’m only level 2).

Is there a better way to do this? Perhaps a script that provides a list of recently failed items on the homepage, or a script that provides a link to failed items you can click while reviewing?

Thanks

You can open up the full item info during review (hotkeys F and SPACE), so I would just look at that whenever I don’t remember an item

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In addition to what Kumi said, you can also check them after you’re done with the review session.

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I mean if you fail them consistently enough they will go back to apprentice one and you can set the self study script to tackle those as a way of banishing leeches from existence :nerd_face: it’s what I do

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If I guru a kanji from level 10 before learning all the other kanji from said level, will the vocab associated with it start appearing in my lessons before I finish learning all the kanji from that level?

By the way, is there any reason the reviews don’t have meaning and reading back to back for kanji and vocab?

Yes, that is what will happen. At least for the vocab that’s on level 10. There could be more vocab to unlock at higher levels, but essentially yes. Vocab is unlocked by guru’ing all the component kanji.

It’s by design. Apparently it helps your memory more if you try to recall them separately, interleaved with other items.

If you’ve guru’d all the kanji in that vocab, it will show up.

As @jneapan mentioned, that’s interleaving. There have been some discussions on the forum regarding the merits and science behind WKs application of it, but WK does go over their reasoning in the FAQ.

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I’m sure there’s an obvious answer to this, but how can I get my name to show up next to my username on this forum? Like these:

Screen Shot 2021-08-25 at 12.18.13 AM
Screen Shot 2021-08-25 at 12.18.42 AM

On Bunpro there’s a “Name” field under the Profile settings but I don’t see that on the WK community. :cold_sweat:

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What a handsome user you have there in your example. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Those titles are either hand-picked sect titles given by mods (like Kumirei’s in that picutre, and for many older users). Nowadays, sect titles aren’t common because the Tofugu people seem to spend little to no time here on the forum.

My title, and those of many others, come from badges. There are special badges that were given out for WaniKani Wednesday events, or that mods give you at random for doing useful things on the forum.

I got my Officer Durtle badge for reporting a thread that was going very sideways, for example.

If you have any, you can change your title on the same screen you can choose to set or hide your level icon. Just go to your user settings here on the forum. :slight_smile:

Capture

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My reasoning for picking you (and @Kumirei of course) has been revealed! :anguished:

Thank you for the info! I understand now. I thought something like that might be the case considering all of the “Durtles” I see around here. :sweat_smile:

My profile doesn’t have the tagline option though so I don’t think I have any. Maybe I’ll get one if I spend more time around here… :nerd_face:

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Indeed. Be careful what you wish for, because if they slap one of those on you it might never disappear no matter what anyone does about it.

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