Notes for wanikani's next revision of mnemonics, meanings

WaniKani
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the radical 郎 (guy) and the kanji 奴 (dude) are too similar in meaning. trying to remember which is which is of no value either since they mean the same thing really. getting their meanings wrong only makes them pop up for reviews more often, when you really are answering correctly whether you answer guy or dude. in my opinion, they should be assigned the same meaning and only different readings, ろう and ど respectively. or then the meaning of the radical 郎 should be changed to ‘son’, since it’s apparently used (or was used) as a counter for sons. there is at least some merit in remembering one as son and the other as dude (in remembering that the ‘ro’ in all the ‘taros’ meaning son?)

i often feel some minor tweaks to wanikani’s meanings for certain kanji or radicals could make the whole experience much smoother. perhaps you all do too? or perhaps there’s something i’m missing and you could point out to me why wanikani has it a certain way! :blush:

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Now this is what I call grade a constructive criticism

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This specific pair never gave me trouble. 野郎 and 奴 are so common that I already knew them phonetically, so by the time I reached them in WK I only needed to attach the kanji to the sound.

But why won’t you just add a custom synonym?

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i guess i only think to do that after I’ve got them wrong many times and the damage is done :sweat_smile: mixing them up too often sometimes makes me think i’ve got the radical/kanji wrong completely, and that it isn’t ‘guy’ and isn’t ‘dude’ and must be something else entirely!
and I suppose the mnemonics for vocabulary that use 郎 would change slightly if the meaning changed to ‘son’…
but i’ve got more where this one came from. putting them here might just me make remember those better!

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You know how I remember 奴？It’s just often used in very informal or even rude comments by anime characters. So “guy” is just a regular word but “dude” sounds much more informal. Hence, I remember that it must be “dude”.

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