A tangent, but I don’t think this is a convergence. RTK pioneered this idea in the 1970s, and everything else you list is a derivative work of that IMHO. In fact its imitators are better characterised by how they have diverged, e.g.:
memorising kanji-to-meaning rather than meaning-to-kanji
including readings
including actual vocabulary, not just kanji as individual characters
including kanji usage frequency as a component of the order in which they are learnt
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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!
100% this!
You just have to roll with the punches especially when learning new skills, for example a new language. Looking at the positive side of things: I was able to learn a handful of English words thanks to WK (ford and canopy comes to mind right now).
Typing out the answers may seem tedious but, for me at least, it made retention easier by leaps and bounds. Sometimes I even wish they’d include even more long-winded word descriptions to distinguish clearly between for example the n-th “rule/law” and “weather/climate” words.
You really don’t – if you use a system like Anki where you just self rate for how well you know each item, then even if you start with linking a Japanese word to a word or phrase in your own language, as you become more solid on knowing a word you gradually transition from “when I see 猫 I think ‘cat’” to “when I read 猫 I immediately think ねこ, I know the meaning, I know this word”. That’s helpful because eventually that’s where you need to be for any word – recalling an English word is helpful initially but gets in the way in the end. (Some people like to use flashcards with images to try to avoid making too strong a link between the Japanese word and an English word rather than between the Japanese word and a concept.)
True, but in the beginning, you’ll most likely have to use another language to learn what the “symbols” mean, what you are describing is something you’ll achieve over time, and the OP doesn’t seem to be that far yet
Yes, but the WK system insists on keeping that English word as the thing you need to recall right the way through, it doesn’t provide a way for it to gracefully fade into the background…
That is true and one of the reasons why one should start to get into reading Japanese ASAP, bc there, they’ll be able to reinforce the vocab and kanjis over and over again without having to use English words At least that’s what my experience about learning lanugages tells me
