Exactly! Though the Jar Jar Binks still might take a little while to fade for me…
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If that’s what you got from my post, you completely missed the point. My point is that if the fake radicals don’t have a real meaning, and the real radicals just mean the same as the kanji, then why are we learning radicals to begin with? Why not start with the kanji? The radicals even have lower requirements for getting guru so you can unlock the kanji faster. They seem completely out of place in the system, and honestly, I think they are just a way to pad content to make it take longer for people to unlock things, so WK can milk a few more months of subscription.
Because we shouldn’t forget. WK isn’t free. You pay for it. You shouldn’t just blindly accept everything they give you. They are here to make money.
I mean, Japanese doesn’t have real radicals. WK completely made it up for their system. I’ve even seen that WK has admitted that a lot of the names and mnemonics for the fake radicals is not very good, and they plan on rolling out better ones in the future. You probably shouldn’t defend something the creators themselves have admitted isn’t very good.
You said why are we calling the box “mouth” when it’s just a box. That’s the mouth radical, it’s called くち or くちへん when it appears in kanji.
https://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:漢字索引_部首_口
Sure, it’s used differently than WK uses it, as in it’s used to look up kanji in kanji dictionaries rather than for mnemonics, but it’s a “real radical” (部首) and it means mouth.
And yes, you’ll find 台 listed as a kanji that includes it on that page I linked.
My post isn’t a defense of all radicals, just amusement that someone is complaining about one of the “real” radicals.
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So you learned 台 on your own. Nice.
But how will the mnemonic you created help you differentiate 台 from these other Kanji?
合 谷 含 舎
The meanings of these other Kanji are not at all related to a machine, or to a flat base.
As far as I know the radicals in WK and the mnemonics that go with them were thought out to be used for the entire course.
It is common knowledge that mnemonics work better if they’re eccentric, shocking, funny or ridiculous, as our brains stick better to information that carries an emotional load with it. That’s why ⺌ in WK means triceratops instead of the original meaning, which is a variation of 小 (small) and ⺘ is nailbat instead of a variation of 手 (hand).
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Striving to be better does not mean they have admitted it “isn’t very good”. What even makes a radical “good”? In this case it would be does it do it’s job to make you remember the kanji, which is entirely subjective and impossible to do for every kanji for every person.
I very clearly stated that I knew that the “box” on it’s own meant “mouth”. But the fact is that the box in “machine” is not at all related to the box in “mouth”. It’s just two different kanji with squares in them.
So, yes, obviously you will learn the kanji as “mouth”, because that’s what it means. But trying to relate “mouth” to “machine” just doesn’t make sense.
The person just below says that having “shocking” mnemonics make them easier to remember, but I’m guessing that is a very arguable statement. The only place they’ve probably seen that is from WK telling them that.
Are those kanji related to “mouth” at all? I’m betting they aren’t. So what I’m saying is, not every mnemonic needs to be based on those that came before it. If you can make up a much better mnemonic, then you should do that, and not try to shoehorn in ones that are probably bad.
You miss the entire point of radicals…
台
Dai is made of the pile and mouth radical. You look out it and see pile and mouth. Mnemonics is about taking what you can see and creating a path for you brain to the answer you need. pile with mouth… pile of cars and radios, etc… machines! Eat a car you die… Dai! They are supposed to make sense! Or at least making sense is not important… the path to the answer is important.
My point is that we see about 5 topics a week where people are complaining that WK doesn’t slavishly stick to the Japanese 部首 names for every single instance that they appear here (which isn’t even possible in the first place, and WK is right not to listen to them), so I just find it amusing to also see the opposite complaint, that WK shouldn’t be using the Japanese name in this case.
We’re going to get complaints no matter what. And we’ve known for months that the radicals are being overhauled, so no one is defending them in their current state.
口 is not going to change drastically though.
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Well here’s a problem. Radicals and kanji rarely ever have anything to do with each other. For instance sometimes a radical is put into a kanji to tell you how to pronounce it… not what it means.
The person just below says that having “shocking” mnemonics make them easier to remember, but I’m guessing that is a very arguable statement. The only place they’ve probably seen that is from WK telling them that.
You are the only one making guesses here. Or didn’t I just read you say Japanese doesn’t have real radicals?
Wanikani didn’t invent mnemonics. Any memorization workshop will tell you about them, There are even memory championships revolving around them.
Copy the Kanji I showed you and paste them on WK’s search bar and you will see how WK teaches you them using the mouth radical and the mouth mnemonics.
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While this may be closer to the reality at higher levels, where the radicals are basically kanji from previous levels and the mnemonic is “you already know that one”, sensing the corporate money grab everywhere isn’t doing Tofugu justice.
The SRS system acknowledges that you need time to remember stuff, and just bingeing a lot of kanji isn’t helping in the long run. If some levels were only a single step the review load would double, because the vocabulary is not going to be less per level.
I think they are doing good work with a nice concept that works. Could it be faster? Maybe, but how the memory works is not necessarily intuitive, so in the long run the additional 30 bucks or whatever may be more smartly invested.
Again, you continue to say things I never said. Yes, “mouth” should be taught as “mouth”. I’m NOT complaining about that. Stop pretending I am. I’m complaining that “mouth” is in no way related to “machine”, yet that is the way the mnemonic goes.
My point is they SHOULD use the Japanese name, but eliminate the blue “radical” portion, because Japanese doesn’t use an actual radical system, and you could skip an entire pointless step by just starting with the kanji instead.
For the radicals that don’t have kanji, you could start with the simplest or most common kanji or vocab word that uses them, and build the mnemonic from there.
Someone above mentioned 久しい, which uses the raptor cage radical. So, if 久しい is the simplest vocab word that uses the radical, why not make the radical mean “long time”? Or just skip it, and start with the very basic vocab word?
久. It’s the person kanji, but there’s something behind it. That something is a wall. The person is extending out an arm to that wall, because they are leaning on it, because they are waiting. And they’ve been waiting for a long time. The kanji is a person waiting for a “long time”.
Boom. Mnemonic that makes %10000 more sense than “raptor cage”, and I made it up in ten seconds by just looking at the thing.
Do you understand the purpose of teaching the radical names? The only reason to teach them here is to employ them in the mnemonics. How does it help anyone to teach that the radical 口 is called mouth (we’re not talking about the kanji 口) and then call it something else in the mnemonic?
And if you’re suggesting that every kanji’s mnemonic should be made from scratch for that individual kanji (i.e. ignore that 口 is the mouth kanji if the meaning doesn’t relate to mouths), then good luck with that. That’s about 50x more work than what WK currently is.
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I think SRS is a good system, but WK has also worked in a method in which mistakes and learning too much are already accounted for in the system. You if get inundated with too many kanji or vocab, you won’t remember them, so you’ll get them wrong, and then you’ll see them more often, increasing the chance you’ll remember them in the future. If you ever get to a point where this happens, the system adjusts, and it prevents you from learning more. It’s self-correcting.
All of this functions %100 perfectly without bad radicals or mnemonics. They aren’t a necessary part of the SRS system that WK has here.
Are you seriously just not reading 90% of what I type? I’m saying teach the >>>KANJI<<< as mouth, because that’s what it is, and skip the >>>RADICAL<<<, because it’s the EXACT same thing as the kanji. Don’t teach the radical wrong. JUST DON’T TEACH THE RADICAL.
In fact, if you read the description for the kanji, it will just say, “This is the same as the radical. You already know it.” Well, then why the f*** did you make me wait two days behind the radical gate if the kanji is the same thing? Just teach the kanji first and be done with it.
Not true. I was reading a “how to study” guide in the 1970s. The more senses we can engage to learn something, the better our chances of remembering it. A sheet of paper with 50 kanji on it would be hard to memorise by staring at them. If we are allowed to invent stories with each kanji, and those stories resonate strongly with our past experiences, we will get it because we are using other parts of our brains to help us learn them.
There are already other products using mnemonics, stories, funny pictures etc to help people remember kanji. Take a look at Kanji Damage or “Kanji Look and Learn” by The Japan Times.
I get the feeling that you are not having a good experience with WaniKani. That’s OK. You’re nearing the end of your free three levels. It would be impossible to make you like something if it is not working for you.
Speaking for myself, I had my one year anniversary with WaniKani yesterday. Before WK, I had already learnt 100 kanji using a textbook and no radicals, no mnemonics. I was struggling to increase my stock of memorised kanji.
In the early levels, I was like you. I was not keen to re-learn 一 as “ground” or 土 as “grave”. It just seemed like too much extra effort for my brain cells. I put up with it and now, at level 22, I have covered 723 kanji and 2328 vocabulary items. I just used an app to test myself against the JLPT N4 list. I had 90% accuracy (reading the English word and picking out the correct kanji from a list).
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It’s used in like 150 other kanji as well… not just the kanji for mouth. But you apparently want it to have a different name every time it appears in those other kanji.
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Here’s the thing about mnemonics (and any study strategy period). People can use whatever statistics, research studies, personal experiences, et cetera to try to convince you to use them, but ultimately, none of us probably know you well enough to know how you best learn. Only you (or your current/prior teachers) can probably have a decent idea of that. Both your learning style (visual, aural, kinesthetic) as well as your personality type will highly influence how you best learn.
For me, mnemonics have never worked. Two things typically happen when I try to use the mnemonic: I either forget what the mnemonic was SUPPOSED to teach me (I have no idea anymore what mnemonic I was taught in school for the planets, but I knew it very well and could remember MVEMJSUNP, but I didn’t remember the rest of the letters that made up the planet names, so I just knew planet V was before Earth) or the mnemonic just ends up confusing me further. For me, it’s just additional information to be learned.
In the case of WaniKani, I don’t see a reason to convince you to use mnemonics. Sure, they are offered in WaniKani, but they are in no way mandatory in order to progress through the system. I’m an aural and kinesthetic learner with crap for visual learning potential, so I learn the makeup through writing the kanji (by the time I learn the vocabulary, I’ve been writing radicals alone, inside of the kanji, and then in the vocab/jukugo) and looking ahead at the vocab. When I have radical reviews, I just look up Quizlet and put in the answers. As the names (aside from the legitimate ones) are complete nonsense, I don’t consider it cheating to look them up. I’d rather spend the time learning the Japanese names for the radicals than a fake study device. Sure, my non-Japanese name for Nailbat is backwards-L-with-mid-top horizontal-and mid-low-upward-intersections, but until I start seeing nailbats with L-shaped handles (good luck swinging that), my way is easier to remember. As for the kanji pronunciations, 足 having SOCK as a mnemonic makes me more mad than I can express with words. As a heavy aural learner, having SOCK サク listed where the pronunciation is そく got an incorrect pronunciation stuck in my head that took many wrong answers to fix. I haven’t read a single mnemonic since then. I flip to the reading page simply for the hiragana and audio clip then move along.
If you’ve never used mnemonics before, it probably means they aren’t that helpful to you. Don’t let the presence of one little tab (that I never read anyway) and community/peer pressure make you attempt adopting a learning strategy you don’t understand. No learning method works the same way for everyone.
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