So let’s say you were buying some condoms, and you get to the register and find that the cashier is one of your students. How do you feel?
In that case, they’d have stopped being my student for about 5 years and had become young adults. If I remembered them at all, I wouldn’t be bothered by people knowing that I’m a human that has sex.
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In that scenario, you can choose to ignore it. When you’re on a train doing reviews, actively engaging with the content, you opt to interact with the potentially offensive language. The analogy you presented is not great honestly, because I bet you that even today, if you went up to those nude magazines and started ogling at the bare-chested models, you would get weird looks in a conservative society. The degree to which you choose to engage with content, whether you’re active or passive, as well as a bunch of other variables matter to how you’re perceived.
Again, I do not believe anything should be removed just because it is inconvenient for some, but an optional feature is not a bad thing, since by definition it allows people who don’t like certain content to be shielded from it.
As paying customers, feature requests and feedback are not beyond us, and I’ve come across the “write a script if you don’t like it” attitude a lot around these parts. It’s disheartening that features that can be useful can get dismissed in one stroke with a “do it yourself” line. This is a paid product and its betterment is in all our interests.
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The point was that people are aware these things exist and don’t shield their children from the shelves. If they see you look at the word 避妊 for a split second in a kanji app, they’re not going to be scandalized.
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Contraception and orgy are totally different levels of inappropriate. Like I wouldn’t feel embarrassed if my students saw me learning contraception for that matter, either (because they should know about it in the first place!)
I’m really trying to focus my argument on the word “orgy” because that is one of the very few words that go past my comfort zone. Like, clearly I learned 乱交 without too much ado (it sure as hell made me hurry to get the answer right so it would go away) but I still don’t think that was necessary.
Additional thought: I have NEVER needed to use the word 乱交 while living in Japan, and rarely needed it in the U.S.
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It’s still in the context of a kanji learning application. Anyone staring over your shoulder is going to realize what it is. So what if they think you chose that word to be added to your flashcard list. If they can read it themselves, then they obviously learned it at some point. How scandalous!
We’re going to have to remove a lot of vocab if that’s the criterion we’re going on.
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I’ve made my point. You are more or less arguing that having ORGY appear on your computer screen at work is not embarrassing and I’m arguing that it is. We can part ways here, unless you have anything else to add.
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I already said I don’t do reviews when people can see them at work. Not because I’m worried about what they’ll think about the words, because they’ll think I’m not working.
If someone is in a place where that’s fine, I’m sure anyone who saw it for that moment would understand an explanation.
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Ok we’re veering in another direction, but I don’t find it remotely out of the question to study Japanese writing during my downtime at my Japanese workplace in a Japanese school in Japan haha.
I’ve gotten more compliments that I can count from teachers walking by who see me studying. Thankfully none of them saw ORGY flash up on my screen, though!
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I would think it’d be worse to be seen clicking away at my cell phone with people not knowing what’s on it. They’re definitely going to assume it’s something frivolous and not Japanese studies. When I do occasionally do reviews on the work computer, I instantly remember why it’s terrible, because I’m getting dinged for answering “to pay back” for 払い戻す because there’s no default ignore button.
An interesting topic, indeed.
I actually agree from the standpoint of those who mentioned recommending WaniKani to students that putting an 18+ confirmation to get access to specific vocabulary would be a great idea in BOTH directions. I haven’t gotten remotely far enough on this site to know the extent of NSFW words are accessible, but it’s my honest opinion that it’s actually pretty important to learn (especially for those who are learning in order to pick up the chicks) those words so you’re not spouting out dictionary terms during intimate time. On the other hand, I’ve already been recommending this for some friends and family (all of whom are adults), and I agree as an educator (at least in America), you’d definitely have some issues with parents if words like orgy appear. Although simply warning the parents ahead of time of the specific issues (since it sounds like there aren’t many of them) could be an easy fix.
On the other hand, WaniKani is a personal-client based learning system that is neither built for school-based contracts nor the only way to learn Japanese, so there’s really no reason for the system to be changed to fit that business model. If I were teaching Japanese in the states, I wouldn’t bother with WaniKani in a classroom. I’d teach the students to use Anki and design decks based on my curriculum. It’s more free-form than WaniKani will ever (or ever intends to) be.
As for the appropriateness of the terms, I’d say just chill a bit, honestly. If you’re using it in the workplace, the likeliness is all of your coworkers know you’re using a pre-built kanji learning system (unless you’ve convinced them you designed the site yourself). I had 金玉 pop up in the office on my computer, and the male coworker beside me just started cracking up. On the bus, train, etc., no one’s going to say anything. Any adult who is watching your screen has no right to complain in the first place, and a child who shouldn’t be seeing those terms probably won’t understand the kanji anyway. I honestly get more nervous at words like 自殺 popping up than sexual words, but I also lack the overt hypersensitivity to sexual content over violence that most Americans seem to have.
TL;DR: I think having special “mode” for NSFW words would be a cool addition for both learning more of it (I think that was MidoriNoSuika’s thought :P) and to allow for easier recommendation of the site for younger learners, but it’s more work on a system that is fine for what it is. It’s one of many kanji learning programs, and anyone who knows you’re learning kanji likely won’t care, and anyone else either shouldn’t be looking in the first place or won’t understand it. It’s not like looking up Japanese words is remotely as easy as looking up words in English is!
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Just to address this a bit more, the site is already going way above and beyond by offering an API to adapt it as we please. I’m not sure that “whenever” is a fair statement regarding how I feel about changes to the site, but in the case of “toning down” the content of the site, it seems reasonable to make that a userscript, since making it as flexible as people want is not a trivial amount of development effort. Yeah, we’re paying for the site, so a certain amount of heavy lifting is expected from the dev team, but when said heavy lifting is designed for the purpose of hiding content that they created, I am not going to insist that they do it.
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If you’re teaching 13 year olds, and they DON’T know how to say testicles, that’s the problem. Not the other way around. It is a perfectly acceptable medical term for a part of the body.
What would you have them say?
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I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist…
As I’m not contributing to the discussion I’ll see myself out.
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Posts like this make me wish we had a dislike button in addition to the like button
To be fair, I’m pretty sure the word WK teaches is more like “balls” than the anatomical term “testicle” in the way it’s used. It appears that it would be 精巣 for anatomy.
So Powerpuncher was right. lol
Either way. If you’re embarrassed about something that someone might, eventually, in passing (by invading your privacy) see on your device’s screen; you might have bigger concerns.
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What some users that have paid are asking for is simply an option to not have certain words displayed. When I signed up and decided to pay, I don’t recall seeing any information about the nature of the content which would have otherwise warned me of what to expect.
From a language learning point of view it is important to know about the context of when it is appropriate to use such words as I can assure you casually using such words (without understanding the context) can end up causing great misunderstanding (to say the least) to whomever may hear it.
I would assume that the vast majority of users are not people who write software for a living so it is an inconvenience to them to not have an option to be able to freely ignore words that can be obviously considered vulgar or offensive.
Hopefully the developers are monitoring this and similar threads and will be able come to a decision about what they would like to do.
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WK doesn’t really promise to prepare you to use almost any word it teaches, since the focus is on you being able to read the kanji. Once you are outside of the safe beginner’s world of nouns like “car” and “mountain,” you can’t take for granted that any word you see here is okay to use in the way you might superficially surmise from its one-word English translations. It’s just not a vocab-usage focused site.
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You seem to be missing my point. I have no problem with any of the words. The point is that giving the option is not a bad idea. Besides, the issue is not whether they know how to say “testicles” or not. It’s a question of giving people the level of control necessary to determine what is best for their context. If youre anlot educator you might not want “testicles” or “orgy” to be a part of the curriculum. That in no way means that people should not know about them. It only means that you have made a decision as an educator which is your prerogative. After all, only you know your class and the relevant stakeholders enough to know what is best for your scenario. It’s all about control, not about taking away people’s vocabulary.