Hi! I’ve joined recently to this community, and so far, I’m pretty happy, but I still don’t fully know how this website works, and I have a question…
I haven’t got any lessons in a few days, and I don’t know if that’s normal…
What’s the deal with lessons?
Thanks in advance!
Did you read through the FAQ? I strongly recommend doing so, since it covers beginner questions like this. ^^
For your particular question:
Oh, and forgot to add; welcome to WK!
Thanks Omun! Have a nice day!
thank you, I’ll check them out 
I was reading through the various guides/faqs on the website, and it says that WK will almost always teach you the on-reading first and then kun-reading later with vocab. I know both of the readings for a lot of kanji already, and I’m just wondering, is there a reason why they would teach you the kun-reading first instead of the on-reading?
I think an example would be that they’ve taught me こえ for 声 first, but I haven’t seen a question for せい yet.
Apologies in advance if this is question that has been asked to death, I really did try and look through the guides.
As far as I know, frequency is often the deciding factor if the kun’yomi is taught with a kanji.
If you’re quite unlikely to be faced with the on’yomi reading in the average native texts, WK just teaches kun from the start.
It streamlines the learning of common usages of common kanji. The more obscure stuff is left to self-explore as one starts reading and supplementing vocab outside of WK. ^^
Thank you for the quick reply and answer! Makes a lot of sense that they would go with frequency as priority.
Hello I am not super new as you can see by my level but I still consider myself fairly new. I have a question about radicals and kanji moving levels. I have been fairly frustrated several times by having a radical or kanji I already learned and got to master or something all of a sudden reappear to be relearned from scratch. Why does this happen and how often should I expect this deal with this frustration? Additionally of I have several radicals and kanji moving up levels that I am relearning am I also have some shift down levels that I may be missing now since I already passed that level? If so, do I ever learn those or are the just unfortunately skipped unless I reset? Thanks in advance for all your help!
Do you mean items going back to Apprentice or Guru, making you review them frequently again? Items get demoted down the SRS levels if you make a mistake. Or do you mean old items somehow reappear in your lesson queue all over again?
I’m afraid I don’t entirely understand this question. Do you think you could explain a bit more what you mean by this?
Aye, I’m a little perplexed too. They did an overhaul where they moved several radicals and kanji to different levels, but that was back in December last year, before you joined. Is it possible you’ve mastered a kanji, and later it appears as a new radical? Because when it does that, it’s creating new radicals to simplify later mnemonics.
What I mean is for example I just became level 12. When all my new radicals and kanji showed up for me to start learning there were ones that I had learned before. Like fix, request, early, beforehand, business to name a few. I have already learned those radicals, kanji, and many vocabulary involving those radicals/kanji. But somehow all that progress was for nothing because now I have to start from zero and do it again. I guess that means this level will be easier but it is very frustrating too and feels like a waste of time to start from zero, especially when it isn’t like these got lowered because I was getting them wrong or anything they just changed level or something.
If there’s a bug, emailing the staff directly would be the best way to handle it. They probably won’t see it here.
But I don’t know of it is a bug or just the creators moving things between levels or some other reasoning. That is what I am trying to determine.
I suppose it could be this. But does turning a previously learned kanji into a radical for a higher level really help later?
An item should never spontaneously go from learned to unlearned.
As others said, an item that was taught as a kanji may be later taught as a radical. This is so future, more complicated kanji don’t have to be composed of 12 radicals or something.
I see what you mean. WK does indeed teach you certain kanji, and in later levels re-teaches some of those kanji as radicals.
It’s for ease mostly. As you move up, the kanji become increasingly complex. Doing it this way avoids that, by level 50, wk has to list 10 low-level radicals that wouldn’t comfortably fit into a mnemonic.
So yes, some kanji will be coming back as radicals, but that is to make things easier in the long run. WK consolidates low-level building blocks into higher level building blocks to smooth out learning and memorization.
Edit:
A sloppy example with the level 50 kanji for “gloom” 鬱
If we stick only with low level radicals, WK would have to make a mnemonic with tree, ground, mountain, gun, forehead, hair, spoon, and one that I don’t immediately recognize. That would be very frustrating to remember.
Pairing it down to the radicals tree, can, and psychopath makes complex kanji easier to write mnemonics for, and easier to learn.
So stick with it. Those new kanji-radicals are on the whole some of the easiest to learn, since it’s usually just the name of the kanji you already know.
Hah. WaniKani’s description of the psychopath radical is “Inside this guy’s forehead you have a spoon and a bunch of hair, not to mention whatever that is in the top left”. Not the greatest mnemonic ever.
Then psychopath only ever gets used in 鬱 anyway…
Hello! From USA
Hey, I am currently level 9…(maybe) and I see what you mean, but you didn’t learn the radical for “beforehand”, you learned the kanji 予 in level 8 or 9. So it is giving you the kanji in the earlier stages, and the radical later. It is the same meaning…but I see what you mean. You aren’t really starting from zero though. There is a really similar radical in level 7 (spear) though.
I’ve seen a few people mention the radicals, but I had a question. Does wanikani use the same like “definition” for radicals as like another japanese book would? What i mean is if I was reading another japanese book that was teaching me kanji, would “一” be defined as “One” cause it is one, or would the radical be called “Ground” as it is on wanikani?