So far my learning is going great, until I try to use one of the vocab words in my converations…then realise that haha, I can easily read the word and know what it means, but I can’t recall it at all.
Sometimes I can reverse engineer it by thinking of what the kanji is and then the readings, but that’s obviously not ideal as it can take a minute.
A simple flashcard where it asks in English for the vocab word and you simply write the reading would be so useful.
Kaniwani sounds like what you’re looking for.
I’ve been using it, definitely helped me with the issue you’re describing.
Aha, perfectly named.
Thanks for the suggestion.
You may also want to check out KameSame. Has the functionality are looking for (as does KaniWani) as well as some additional functionality.
https://www.kamesame.com/app/login
Nothing wrong with KaniWani, but I found I liked KameSame a bit better. The main thing I found frustrating with KaniWani that is addressed in KameSame is flexibility on vocab pulled from WaniKani where multiple Japanese vocab have the same English meaning.
For example, in WK 母、お母さん and 母親 all have the main English meaning listed as “Mother”. So KaniWani will prompt you with “Mother”, but you have no idea which one it is looking for and if you choose the wrong one it will be marked wrong and you move on. KameSame handles with by informing you “Yes, 母 is an answer for Mother, but that is not the one we are looking for here, please try again”.
You can get around this to some extent in KaniWani by adding custom notes for an item (e.g. This mother is the one used when talking about your own mother).
Either one is great. I also found that including production in addition to recall improved things overall if you want to Japanese beyond just reading.
For Kamesame in browser, does it not automatically convert romanji to hiragana like kaniwani does? I don’t necessarily want to download a keyboard to be able to use the site
It does not. What OS are you using? In most cases it is not necessary to download anything, you just need to enable the IME and set Japanese as a language to use.
Are you also wanting to sometimes access the application from a computer where you are not able to enable support for another language? In general I cannot imagine learning/studying Japanese without being able to actually write/input in the language.
Typically when I use my cellphone I just use the Japanese keyboard, but if I am typing on my desktop I just default to phonetically typing the hiragana using English letters and letting kaniwani automatically convert it to kanji