Are there tips to get recurring mistakes out of your head? I always mix up the readings of two kanji:
走 そう
足 そく
I also have the same problem with these two, but the meaning, not the reading:
名字 surname
氏名 full name
Another recurring mistake I do is mixing up kanji and vocab. For instance 苦
苦しい is painful. But when it gets good in my head, I get the kanji 苦 and say “painful” and it is WRONG because I have to say “suffering”, and it does not even accept any “pain” related term. then a while later I get 苦しい again and say “suffering” and it is WRONG because I have to say “painful”. This is causing my brain to hurt.
Hi! Funny enough, I had the exact same issue with 走､足, what helped me was engraving the meaning of run, which is along the lines of the soul (そう) leaving when you run. But also just context from vocab, like 不足 or 走行.
But ill also say its heavily influenced by effort as well, so eventually you will remember it so long as you put in the effort!
Thursday July 4 2024 Content Updates says that “painful” was added to the allowlist for the 苦 kanji last year, so that shouldn’t be a problem any more I hope.
More generally, kanji meanings aren’t super important or tightly defined compared to word meanings, so while you probably want to try searching the forums or asking if there’s a reason not to accept the answer you keep giving for a kanji item, to check that it’s not too far off the central idea for the kanji, I think it’s fine to be quite liberal with defining synonyms here.
For mixups of two readings or meanings, I sometimes have luck with working out my own little mnemonic specifically for distinguishing which way round they go; then as long as I pause a bit before answering I can think through the mnemonic. Eventually also repetition will help here.
The tip is to focus on vocabulary rather than the kanji. (I’m not sure WaniKani breaking up learning kanji and its related vocabulary is a good thing.)
暴走、脱走、逃走、競走。When you read those aloud it’s always そう, never そく.
不足、遠足、満足、補足。Sounds like そく. But then, 裸足. Whoops. Gotta be careful with that. Body parts are a common exception.
My guess is that a problem you have is that there is not enough “distance” in your head between the kanjis.
One easy remedial is to specialize more the kanji by associating them to more of their concepts when learning them.
(走 | run) is a lot more differentiable from
(足 | leg, foot, be sufficient) when you associate 足 with more than just the primary concept (and learning the other concepts help with remembering the 足りる related vocab)
If that’s not enough you can also split them into radicals, here 足 and 走 are WK radicals but other services propose radical for them.
Eg on JPDB.
足 is (口 | mouth) + (龰 | running shoes)
走 is (土 | soil, earth, ground ) + (龰 | running shoes)
I really recommend that upon learning a kanji you take a look at it into other services
Currently I like
https://jisho.org/ for more concepts you can add “safely” as user synonyms
If you can remember that 走 is (Run) than think: He ‘runs’ そう fast!
And 足 is foot. And it could use a そく (sock).
Both 走 & 足 have a sideview of a foot on the bottom of the kanji.
But 走 has all those horizontal lines (wind/air trails) because it’s running.
And 足 has the underside of it’s square foot on the top (try to imagine it’s a square foot).
You are mixing just the readings, not the meanings, right? For reading, a way is to recall one or a few representative vocab very strongly. (And also noticing that some vocab are more common than others…)
不足 and 満足 are common enough, maybe more than 暴走 or 走行 (but pick a representative, anyway).
I recalled the usage of those. 氏名 is in the form to fill, like on the airplane arrival at the airport.
名字 is in another context, like spoken in manga bubbles.
“suffering” might be better, because it is also in 苦い and 苦労, etc.
Your brain did not hurt, just suffered in various ways.
“Suffering” is either a verb in gerund form or a noun.
苦しい is an i-adjective. What is an adjective that describes feeling suffering? Painful
Hope that helps!
(As far as the kanji card, just add synonyms for pain and painful. Kanjis are concepts so, as long as you remain aware of that fact, it does not matter if you remember then as nouns or adjectives.)
My method is to keep failing them until I recognize on sight - not the answer, but that this is THAT %^&% ONE again. Then it’s a simple matter of focusing on the mnemonics of both.
I should say, I don’t normally think too much about the mnemonics past apprentice, sometimes guru. I just start recalling the answer on sight without the intermediate mnemonic step. But once I can recognize “oh, hard one”, then I can force myself to deliberately step through the mnemonic for that one. And then once I’ve gotten it right enough times, the mnemonic becomes unnecessary again.
