Radicals, Useful or Useless?

Actually, this is something that’s been puzzling me for quite a while, and I hope you don’t mind my asking: why do Chinese speakers use WaniKani? Why do you use WaniKani? I’m a Chinese speaker too, and I don’t use the WK SRS precisely because most kanji are already familiar and retain almost all the same meanings in Japanese. Do you find WK useful overall, and if so, in what way?

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Radicals are useless when the radical name WK chooses has nothing to do with its actual meaning or meanings of the kanji its used in. Which happens most of the time.

Would be nice if you could not just assert that as a fact, because, y’know, it is not a fact. It’s your opinion.

The radical names are chosen so that they can be remembered well and effectively be used in the mnemonics. You may not use the mnemonics, you may think they’re bad and you may find the decision to not use the canonical radicals and radical names wrong and they may be useless to you, but the fact remains that this decision was made by a reason, and the approach works for many people, and thus your assertion that “radicals are useless” is, quite simply, factually, provably wrong.

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I don’t have a problem with the radicals themselves, but I would prefer not to have to re-divide a new kanji into individual WK radicals when it contains another previously learned kanji made of those same radicals. Just use the damn kanji in the mnemonic.

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Never once stated it was a fact you made that inference. WK ridiculous mnemonics might work for you but I’m finding them to be pretty stupid at my current level they were useful around levels 3-10 when I had no clue how WK worked but I have since optimised my learning method and don’t really require WK’s dumb radical names anymore.

I’d prefer to guru the radicals and then not be drilled on them after that. Their meanings show up again as new kanji are introduced, and that is enough of a refresh. I’d rather spend the time spent burning them being drilled on kanji and vocab.

Agree with others who said that if the radical is the same as a kanji they should have the same meaning.

I like using them to help remember the mnemonics when I’m first learning a new kanji. I agree though that I hate getting drilled on them and getting them wrong when I can’t quite remember the correct name that WK will accept.

When you say “radicals are useless”, that is an assertion of a fact. That’s just how English works.

If you don’t want people to infer that you are making an assertion of fact and dismissing differing opinions out of hand, try “radicals are useless to me” or “i think that radicals are useless”. Far less confrontational, far less likely to irritate people when you come into a discussion after 75 other posts and just state your opinion without reacting to anything else that has been said before.

In those cases I’d still disagree with you but at least we could have a constructive discussion.

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I find them the easiest part, and see their function. They help the process of learning the kanji by a LOT! I use the given mnemonics, which rely on you knowing their names for the parts, so yeah, I need them, I want them, I learn them with ease

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Yes, I made the experience it depends on when you start adding kanji to you study routine.

Back in school we already introduced a few hundred vocab words while learning kana and some introductory expressions before adding kanji studies. Also the early kanji where often based on iconic background so the textbook provided some picture where kanji like sun or fish came from.

In the early phases we also relied heavily on strokes before counting them became too much of a hustle and we were introduced into the concept of radical.

We didn’t name them since for looking up kanji via radical we only need to visually recognize these radical. We discussed though that some of them give hints on what the meaning of the kanji might be connected with. Others give hints on one of the readings.

Back then we had to study kanji actively which means we also practiced to write them. Nowadays, when I am mainly interested in passive kanji knowledge outside of WK I usually go for vocab words only. Only after encountering the same kanji in a couple of different words I may start digging deeper into it and only in case I haven’t encountered it on WK by then :slightly_smiling_face:

And to comment on the original question: WK requires no more prior knowledge than the two kana systems. Having something that builds on each is considerate and makes a lot of sense to me. In few cases I struggle with them I eventually add a synonym.

Depending on the dictionary this already can lead to different indexes. I looked up my old (paper) kanji dictionary which may be a little bit aged by today but it had two indexes for different radical systems. Both of them followed systems introduced by respected researchers back at that time. At a first glance both of them do not look like a 1:1 version of the 214 Kangxi radical but I did not actually double check. :innocent:

Modern dictionaries may follow the 214 Kangxi radical though.

Maybe it wasn’t a typo after all and that’s why OP introduced “radicles” :sweat_smile:

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I’m an idiot so any help is welcome to be honest. Its also cool that you can add your own synonyms if you make up your own radical names. If you prefer an official mneomonic you can just copy paste a dictionary definition on the reading notes and add a synonym, so that’s pretty cool.

I’ve recently reset after about 4 years away and revisiting the basics has definitely brought up some old feelings. I voted useful because in general the radicals are helpful but WK doesn’t follow the original meaning for every radical nor does it follow “traditional” mnemonics. So, I find myself unmotivated to take them too seriously here.

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After a while, they are useless and counterproductive, but at first they are somewhat useful (as a utility in the short-term)

Aye, that was part of my explanation to @CDR-Strawberry.

There are no “official” lists of radicals that everyone agrees on and even standardization efforts like using the Kangxi system are never going to be one to one.

So that makes WK’s list no worse than any of the others. They all adhere to their intended purpose.

I kind of like “radicles” :wink:

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That is true, but I don’t think that this:

So that makes WK’s list no worse than any of the others.

is actually a logical conclusion from there.

In a way, everything about language, including the meaning of certain words, is created and defined through consensus. E. g. the meaning of “determination” (a word which we discussed in detail a couple of days ago on here) does not have one canonical definition, different dictionaries define it in different ways, and its actual usage depends on people’s intuition (which is also somewhat individual). And yet, if I said that “determination” means “a small horse from South Tyrol”, I’d pretty clearly be in the wrong.

And I think the same logic can, to an extent, be applied to radicals: they aren’t perfectly standardized but there is to some extent a “canon” of radicals and their names, and I feel like just making up an entirely new set of radicals and radical names is not equally valid as adhering to that canon as long as it is practical.

That is not to say that I disagree with WaniKani’s decision to throw out some of the more obscure radical names and replace them with more intuitive meanings. I am somewhat ambivalent on that decision but I think it kind of works for the purpose of learning. But it does kind of irk me the wrong way that WaniKani doesn’t draw a clear line between the concept of radicals as it is generally understood, and the kanji components that WaniKani misleadingly labels as “radicals”.

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I don’t disagree. I think the misunderstanding here is that WK’s radicals really do include a large majority of the traditional radicals. They leave some out and they change some names, but they have been good enough for me that I haven’t had any issues searching unknown Kanji in Jisho using 部首 entry.

The logical conclusion for me is that the differences are tailored to WK’s own system, just as other classification systems will tailor them for things like dictionary lookups.

So I think the internal consistency from WKs point of view makes it just as valid as any other system.

I’d actually argue that the general understanding is that the conflation between “radical” and “component” is so widespread that the distinction becomes a matter of pedantry.

I mean, I still call them radicals because it’s easier to communicate what I’m taking about that way, even when both I and the person I’m talking to know what they really are.

Where I draw the line at is Kanji as radicals. But I just add a synonym and move on. :wink:

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I’ll be mostly echoing others here, but as I have learned at least one kanji due to radicals and mnemonics, I consider it useful.

What drives me up the wall is when the radical and the kanji are the same - in that case, I don’t like the extra repetition. I don’t see the point. (like Fur) If reviews stack up over the day and I’m encountering the radical and the kanji in the review it annoys me b/c of time spent.

It is better to learn the radicals directly in Japanese instead.
It is useless to know the “scooter” radical when trying to explain a kanji to someone, why not “しんにょう” instead?

How dare you say things that are entirely true, and call me names that are this appropriate?

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Because to someone who is just learning Japanese, “shin’nyou” is absolutely, entirely meaningless. Because the radical looks like a scooter, not like a shin’nyou. Because “That is a turkey on a scooter” is easier to memorize than “that is a tori on a shin’nyou”.

(According to Wikipedia, it should be しんにゅう, not しんにょう, but my point still stands.)

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