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

すごい! Interesting! so you know the Chinese meanings and pronunciations and want to know the japanese’s ones?

What an interesting perspective you’ll have! はじめまして!Nice to meet you!

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Welcome!

I hope you enjoy your stay here. Probably, some or much of the vocabulary will be different, too? I have no idea, as the only Mandarin I know is Ni Hao for “hello”. XD

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Since many of the kanji come from Chinese Characters, it’s a matter of knowing how to pronounce them.

There’s similarities in terms of pronunciation, and they happen quite often.

For example: 安全 is said like an chuan or ahn churn depending on Cantonese and Mandarin, but when said in Japanese it becomes An Zen.

Another example is 中国/中國. Zhong guo or Zong Guo (Mandarin/Cantonese) is Chuugoku in Japanese.

One interesting thing is that some kanji are no longer used very much in comparison to the Chinese characters which share the same meaning. This can work either way. 我 Is ware in Japanese, and quite old, but Wo is used commonly in Chinese

(It might be hard to understand in text form. In speech form the similarities are more noticeable)

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I get it. But because in Chinese (and I can’t tell if I’m looking at Simplified or Traditional) everything is kanji… I don’t know what’s a particle or what gets skipped or how words are formed. Whereas in Japanese, 水力 is hydraulic power. (Water + Power = hydraulic). I just feel like it’s possible that some compound words/vocabulary will surprise you with a different (however slight) meaning than you expect.

I noticed that today, some Chinese ladies came in who didn’t understand any English and I could hear the numbers just fine when the translator was confirming her address. It sounded close enough to Japanese, that I knew the numbers. However I couldn’t understand anything else.

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Oh, sorry if I came off as rude or anything.

(Simplified/Traditional refers to how words are written, like 课 or 課。)

As for particles…

是 can be interpreted as は in writing

的 can be interpreted as の in writing

The grammatical structure in Japanese can be easily changed into Chinese

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No you did not! I can tell you’re just being helpful.

Most of all, I’m just surprised you’re coming in this thread with answers instead of questions. ^^

I didn’t know that about Chinese to Japanese Grammar. Neat! (Do both Mandarin and Cantonese both use Traditional and Simplified writing styles, or does Mandarin only use Simplified and Cantonese use Traditional? Or do I have that backwards?)

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It depends on region.

Most of China uses and heavily prefers Simplified out of simplicity, while places like Taiwan and Hong Kong heavily prefer Traditional due to it being easy to understand and faithful to the origins.

I won’t get too in-depth, too far and it becomes a political issue.

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Huh. Interesting. I would’ve expected “Simplified” to be the easier of the two. Well, thanks for that.

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It might just be me, but simplified often just looks strange to me, because it incorporates a lot of shapes that aren’t used in traditional kanji. Like… un-kanji kanji. I can imagine why some might dislike it.

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What a cool turn this thread has taken. I am fascinated by the japanese chinese comparisons.

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Oh, Simplified is easier to write. Traditional is easier to remember.

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Just remember to remember both On and Kun readings well for each respective Kanji. Also, don’t forget non-Kanji vocabularies - knowing a lot of Kun readings might help a little on this aspect.

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Not really a new user question, but I just have a small question that doesn’t really need its own thread.

It’s about 売り上げ (amount sold). My input method suggested to correct it to 売上 and when I asked Google Translate, it suggested the same thing. So, are both ok? And both mean the same thing and are pronounced in the same way?

Yes, they mean the same thing and are pronounced the same. This is common. You’ll see the same for things like 入り口/入口 and whatnot.

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I think they have different uses… for instance… in example sentences… I’m only seeing 売上 as 売上の… that could be incidental but I’m not sure… I would assume they are used for different reasons until we learn better.

I’m not aware of any restricted usages.

But the shorter ones tend to get put on signs and graphs, etc, to save space.

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Hi all,

Question here. I have seen some people reference certain scripts, and how they can be used to enhance the WK experience.
Is there a site with a lot of useful scripts, or a list in a thread or something?

I tried searching the forum, but only found 3 hits searching ‘script’ or ‘scripts’, so I was wondering if I missed something.

List of all scripts available: The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps

How to install a script: Visual Guide on How To Install A Userscript

You’ve absolutely missed something. Not to worry, I’ll set you straight.

If you go to the main community page (https://community.wanikani.com/)
On the left you’ll see various categories. You want under Wanikani the subcategory “api-and-third-party-apps”

Or @jprspereira can be fast at literally everything and beat me to the punch.

I will add though, searching “script” gave me 50+ hits. If you hit enter it takes you to a list of results.

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I’m terribly sorry. Now that I tried again, I came to 50 results as well, and wasn’t able to reproduce the three results anymore:disappointed_relieved:

Both you and @jprspereira , many thanks for the quick reply. I will be sure to check out your suggestions.