No flashcards?

[NeoArcturus]

@rdri

I don’t want it to use my native language. I just think that it could be more effective in teaching me language X, if it required me to think in language Y less and express something using language Y less.

So you kinda want to click or think in images? Or how else do you think could it be possible to answer the questions, even if you use flashcards? There are two ways to learn a vocab:

1. You use a picture and a word and connect them to eachother, e.g. if you have the image of a king, you should associate 王 with it.

2. You use another language that you speak and associate the word in this language with the corresponding word in the language you want to learn, e.g. 王 with “king”.

Also, you kinda have a contradiction with yourself. Here I quote two things that you said:

@rdri

I don’t want it to use my native language.

@rdri

But when you’re teaching me Japanese and ask me to output using non-Japanese, you are inserting additional translation layers that should not be needed.

The only two situation where no additional translation layers are created is by either using your native language or by using a language you speak fluently. You have to output non-Japanese to see if you actually know whether you’ve learned an item or not, and no matter what system you’re using, you’ll always have to use another language to see whether you’ve learned an item or not, maybe not in written form, but perhaps in spoken form. Any way, you’ll end up using another language you know well to learn Japanese.

@rdri

But why do I need to use English?

Because most people speak English, and while I agree that it would be great if WaniKani could be available in more languages, it is not possible right now because the team maintaining WaniKani is rather small, and offering the app in just one more language would be a lot more work than it is right now: Securing the quality of the translations of the words, keeping the vocab, kanjis and radicals up to date with the English version, which means adding new, corresponding vocab, kanjis and radicals in the additional language if the WaniKani team adds new vocab, kanjis and radicals to the English version, writing new mnemonics for almost every item (except for the radicals, if you wanna know why, just think about it for a second) and so on.

This is what @koichi himself, one of the founders of Tofugu and WaniKani, said to me, if you want to read it yourself, you can check this post: WaniKani in other lanugages - Update about current situation? - Also, Koichi is in this thread! - #10 by koichi

@rdri

Well, if you presented me with 2 options “9” and “9 things” I’d of course click the latter. But instead you ask me to type, using English, while I’m learning Japanese, possibly on a keyboard I don’t like, and I think this is not justified, so all I’m willing to give you is “9”, as a favor.

Sigh… Life doesn’t work like that. You can’t just wish for anything, you’ll always have to acquire things (especially learning a new language) through hard work, and if I say hard work, I not only mean work as we usually the word, but also coping with things we don’t like. See, as hard as this might sound, but instead of complaining about something being the way as it is (like you using a keyboard you don’t like), you should just try to fix the thing you don’t like. There is no such thing as a generally perfect app to help you learn Japanese as everyone has different preferences, but if you don’t like the way something is, you’ll have to try to change the thing.

This is not only true in this case, but also in many other life situation: Life is not something where you can just make a wish and it will happen. If you want something to be a certain way, you’ll most likely have to but more or less effort into that happening.

@rdri

I know that. When I typed “9” I really meant “nine things” but expected the system to process that, because I couldn’t care to type the whole thing.

You can’t expect it to process “9” as “9 things” if there is a vocab that is actually labelled as “9”, so if you just type “9”, it assumes you are confusing “9 things” with “9”. There’s absolutely nothing wrong about that.

What I’m going to say now may sound harsh, brutal and unfair, but it doesn’t really matter what I say or not say, because if you really want to, you’ll always find a negative side, and you’ll always think that it’s bad. And that’s OK, everyone has a different opinion, but I think engaging in this particular discussion would be pointless. I’m not here to convince someone about my opinion, after all, I’m here to learn Japanese and, maybe, just a little bit, chat and chill a bit and help someone here and there.

Again, I’m sorry that WaniKani can’t offer what you’ve expected, but maybe another app can help you better. If I were you, I’d stop complaining about the whole system and just get a resource for Grammar, Kanji and Vocab and start working.

Sorry if I, at some point, sound unintentionally rude or something like that, I often have a rather offensive tone when trying to convey my disagree. Anyway, I wish you the best with learning Japanese!