Hi Devs,
Sure this in other places too, but man are the non-kanji words an annoying addition. Came here to learn how to read Kanji, not for out of context low level kana only words that should be introduced with grammar.
Honestly shocked it wasn’t made into it’s own track or learning section. And no clue why this wasn’t done in beta with select users or at minimum offered with an opt-out button.
Please fix this.
I honestly love the addition of the kana words. If anything its just a chance to practice them more.
Maybe non-Kanji aren’t so bad, but they don’t feel right to be included in levels, as they aren’t building blocks nor help remember building blocks.
Opt-out / opt-in by sets (decks) is probably the best option.
Most likely you won’t be listened to for a while
At least in the two months or so in which they’re rolling out the first batch of words
I’m personally not conflicted by the new words because they’re so few and I already know them.
I’m not saying that you don’t voice your concerns, just bear in mind that you must likely will have to deal with the new mindset of the WK team
I propose naming the thing Wanikana (yes, with a) to deal exclusively with kana words. maybe as a separate path or as something you must activate or deactivate (as in the opt-out suggestion)
Since i joined WK, this has been the silliest thing they have introduced…
Agreed I am more than happy they are being introduced and I certainly wouldn’t want separate tracks, decks or other unnecessary complications. I wouldn’t be against an opt out button so those who for some reason came here just for learning kanjis can continue to do so, but the rest of us just came here to learn to read and understand Japanese and kana words are a huge part of it.
yes, and as I said in other thread as well
vocab in WK was made to reinforce the kanji learned, what is the point of kana only in this case?
Were they? Over 7k vocabs seems a bit of an overkill to just reinforce the memorization of Kanjis.
Not really. Actually, not enough to cover all useful Kanji readings and meanings, especially in later levels.
7k vocab for 2k kanji makes it only 3-4 vocab per kanji.
Ok no, but they are kidding, right? Have they really just added する、こんにちは、これ、コーヒー、いつ 、ホテル and おはよう?? Like, those were one of the first words I learned when I started learning Japanese, why do they think this is valueable vocab that needs to be reinforced by an SRS system? Even if you don’t know them and are fairly new to Japanese, those words can be easily learned and remembered by immersion, come on… I don’t need a 6 months long SRS system to remember what hello and good morning means…
I mean, per say I won’t say adding kana-words is bad (expect that I don’t like this much), I just thought that they would at least choose some that were actually cool and unknown by the vast majority of learners. They have 60 kana-words coming in, if they are all like this, I’m losing it… I’m not normally like this, but… That’s that.
It’s a bit more than that, since many vocab items have multiple kanji, but yeah.
I just had to do two more batches of lesson tonight because I was lagging behind my self-imposed schedule but I couldn’t understand what I messed up because usually I time this correctly and I thought I was done for the day.
Turns out that some dirty kana vocab sneakily found its way into my lesson pile while I wasn’t looking!
The selection is very strange, I agree. In particular これ stands out to me, because surely you’ll always want to teach これ、それ、あれ and どれ together to contrast them? It’s almost more grammar than vocab IMO.
I think you may think differently when by level 42 you will have 300+ reviews per day…
yeah, when i heard they were introducing kana only vocab, I thought it would be katakana words that are confusing like マンション or ホッチキス, not words that are in the beginning of every elementary level Japanese textbook 
Edit: I just reviewed the list of what they’re planning on adding. I’m still annoyed with things like おはよう and コーヒー, but I like that they’re adding onomatopoeias. I hope they add more of those because Japanese is filled with so many and often used, I think they will be a great addition.
Wait until Level 48 
Just came to the community page to make my own post saying the same. After the thousands of hours I’ve spent learning Japanese I don’t really need to be practicing some of the first words of Japanese that you learn like おはよう and こんにちは. I guess if you’re starting out it could be kind of useful (that said surely the logical first step would be to teach hiragana and katakana first?), but please give us an opt out system. Alternatively does anyone know of a userscript that lets you burn an item with a click of a button?
I don’t really understand what direction the team are wanting to take this site in. It’s always been about learning kanji, and picking up some vocabulary on the side as a bonus. I feel if you want to add more content, then adding the N1 kanji that you haven’t yet added would be sooo much better received. Or if you’re looking to make Wanikani a site with equal focus on kanji and vocabulary then add an alternative vocabulary SRS path (like bunpro did with separate vocab and grammar paths), but please don’t combine the two. I’m like 5000 cards deep on the core 10k anki deck so I’m not looking for the vocabulary practice myself.
Final point: Wanikani is popular because its one of the best sites/apps for learning kanji. There are so many other sites and apps to learn vocabulary out there, I personally feel like you should just focus on what you do so well, kanji.
Ya we already exploded about this weeks ago. WK dev team doesn’t care. They’ll railroad whatever they want. They have completely lost the plot. Openly hostile with their community at this point.