The reason I said it comes with time, is because the exceptions are present from the very beginning, and so it could be frustrating for someone trying to implement this rule set right of the bat. For example, in level 2, cyanfolds’s current level, they’re going to see:
本 - single kanji with onyomi reading
天 - single kanji with onyomi reading
王 - single kanji with onyomi reading
文 - single kanji with onyomi reading
子犬 - two kanji, no body parts, both kanji are kunyomi
Now, whether that’s confusing to cyanfolds or not, I don’t know, but to me those rules are good when you are taking a stab out in the real world at something you’ve never seen before, and I probably wouldn’t recommend people worry about them much when sitting down to learn a new word in the comfort of study time.
True, but from what I’ve seen, there are definitely people who rely too much on time but never actually pick it up. Exceptions to the rules are practically commonplace in japanese, so they will come across stuff like this eventually.
No matter what, those cases will become part of his way of thinking as time goes on, like you said. I just feel like its useful to go into learning with that mindset so that you notice these patterns as you come across them. So long as you don’t let the exceptions confuse you, it should be more efficient and less headachey.
And overall, thats just a general tip for learning japanese. Take everything with a grain of salt and don’t let the exceptions confuse you.
Yeah, I mean, it’s up to them. We didn’t even touch on mixed readings, which do appear several times in the first 10 levels even (両手, 茶色, which I guess are harder to screw up because 両 and 茶 don’t have kunyomis that are going to interfere with your guessing process, but you might expect them to turn the second kanji into onyomi).
Yeahh and then you have rendaku and turning つ into っ. THOSE I let time do its work on, because you can really just start to hear which feels more natural to say. And then you have kanji like 生 which have so many readings that its another game in and of itself trying to guess which to use. Ahh why couldn’t they have just kept with (usually) one reading per kanji like chinese.
Help, I am on the phrase ‘3 things’, which has ‘Mi-Tsu Tsu’ like Mi and Tsu are supposed to be a combined character, except there is no combined character for Mi and Tsu. I tried Mi Tsu Tsu and it flags it as wrong. What am I doing wrong? I really do not understand the implication here or what wanikani wants.
The small tsu represents gemination in Japanese. For this word, you can write it in a few ways, the most typical of which is represented as “mittsu” in romaji. If you type that you’ll get what WK wants. Doubling up the next character will give you a small tsu first.
So 学校 (がっこう) is gakkou, and so on.
You can also type “xtsu” or “ltsu” at any time to get a small tsu without specifying the following character yet.
I’m trying to work out whether or not wanikani is for me. Quick background:
I lived in Japan for a couple of years (for the first year I solely went to a Japanese school every day, and passed the JLPT N3 and N2). I just returned to the UK a few months ago, but am possibly planing on going back to Japan for good. Although I passed the N2 (just over a year ago), my kanji and vocabulary are terrible. My grammar is pretty decent, and I understand most of what is said around me (listening was 満点 in N3, and close to in N2).
Now I didn’t care too much about kanji and vocab back then, as the way I saw it, as long as I could communicate what I wanted to, and understand when spoken to, I was happy. But now I’m deciding on going for good, I want to become fluent, and be able to read almost anything. I’m terrible with motivation when it comes to kanji and vocab. I’ve used memrise but didn’t get too far with it. I really like wanikani so far (albeit I’m still on the first 26 radicals). But how long am I going to spend before I start learning kanji I haven’t seen (rhetorical)? Is it worth the wasted time in the beginning? Is there enough content near the end to justify the time and money? What other resources would you suggest (not anki)?
If you want to specifically improve your kanji skills, WaniKani will definitely help. Vocab is a bit more iffy, as most of the vocab here is solely for the purpose of helping you remember the kanji.
(Forgets slightly that you are being rhetorical)
In terms of reaching a point where you would be learning new kanji, it depends how fast you go. Are you dedicated and good enough at memorizing to be able to rush through levels in ~7 days? Or does it take you slow, repeated study to learn new things?
For the most part, the “wasted time” in the beginning is just that–in the beginning. Within a few levels at whatever speed you set, you should see the kanji and vocab building up significantly. Whether any of it in the relative-beginning is new to you depends on how much you remember from the JLPT tests.
You could try plugging in your API key (from this page) to this progress site and see how long it will take you to reach certain JLPT levels based on your current speed.
Personally, I think WaniKani works very well. You could expect a similar response from most of us beyond the first levels here on the forums. For me, WaniKani has taken me from the point of I-think-I-know-that-katakana to being able to read most of my manga collection even at this low level. Certainly your experience will be a little different from your prior experience with Japanese (and N2?!), but here you will find a lot of people with varied background in Japanese who enjoy using WaniKani and find that it works well for them.
At this point, the best you can do is live out the rest of your free trial and see if the system of mnemonics and SRS works for you. No point in shelling out for something that doesn’t work for you–but if after the trial period it seems to work for you, consider trying a monthly or yearly subscription before going for the lifetime. I’ve been here for over two years and just got to that point, so there is certainly no hurry.
I’m not at your level, but I did start <1 month from taking N3 for the second time (having failed last year), and here I am, only a month in and finding it incredibly helpful. Even though I’ve known a majority of the kanji I’ve come across, it’s helping to cement readings that never quite stuck and the fact that it makes me type in my answers in invaluable. So, take that for what it’s worth I suppose.
That’s actually very helpful, thank you. I was also quite lazy with remembering readings and decided to go down a path of learning the readings for vocabulary, but not of the kanji themselves. So coming across new combinations meant I wasn’t able to easily work out the reading. Short term = good, long term = bad. So in that sense wanikani should help.
But I also want to learn how to write them. Muscle memory is important, and I want an SRS that can help with this. I tried Skritter (I even paid for it) a couple of years ago, but it didn’t seem great unfortunately. If you come across anything let me know!
Thank you for the detailed reply - it definitely helps. My main worry is I want to be sure it’s right for me before paying for a lifetime package, but also want to do this whilst there’s a sale! But at the same time, wanikani seems like a good motivator in my (very little) free time to do some form of Japanese study, so I think I’ll stick with it for now! And thanks for that progress-checker link, looks very useful!
I just started out trying WaniKani and have heard a lot of good things. I am still in the free part, but I am enjoying it… I am even thinking about buying a subscription! Just wondering how have you guys experienced WaniKani, how much did it help you, is the subscription really worth it? (kind of thinking it is a lot of money D= )
The question is, can you get better value by spending that money elsewhere? I mean, there are free resources out there, but for me, no one makes it as simple to just do the work and learn the kanji. You don’t have to do the annoying stuff, like creating the cards or mnemonics. You don’t have to decide on how to organize the order of the topics. Just log in and do the content placed in front of you regularly and you’ll improve.
I had tried many things before I came to WK, but had trouble making progress beyond about 500 kanji with other resources. I own many books on the subject, etc.
Now, kanji is my strongest area of Japanese (though listening is catching up these days).
Thank you! I also have used different resources and I’m looking for a better way to learn my kanji. So far WK fits what I want, and you are so right about not having to do the annoying stuff!
For me this just is quite a lot of money to spend, and (if I do) I just want to make sure it is worth it =D
What kind of membership would you recommend? Month, year, forever… ?
Well, it depends what your financial situation is and how long you think you’ll use the site. I’m on the second year of a yearly subscription, and it would renew in June. I’m not sure that I’ll want to renew again, but we’ll see.
Unfortunately, if you did want to go for the lifetime one, you did just miss the annual sale over the holidays. It was $200 for a few weeks, instead of $300.
I think a major factor would be how quickly you think you would want to do the content. At the absolute maximum speed, it would take about a year and a half to burn every item.
But a relatively small percentage of the users even make it to level 60. So it’s kind of hard to say you should base a decision on how long it’ll take you to get to level 60 when, statistically, you aren’t likely to (nothing about you personally, of course).
Yeah, you should check out both the “going it slow” and “fast” threads to get a comparison of workload and speed. For myself, I’ve had the lifetime account for two years and a month (after the free level), and this is how far I’ve come (level 16). It’s good to factor in other things too, like your work schedule or family obligations, etc, that may or may not make it harder or easier to finish in the 1.5-2 years an annual subscription would be very worth it for.
Search the forums, you will find various accounts and reasons behind all of it.