I’m looking to close out my wanikani journey by the end of January and it’s been a great resource.
But I gotta say, I’ve gotten a lot of perplexed looks when I use some of the vocab I’ve learned here. I’m living in Japan now and my gf is Japanese and it’s become a pretty routine thing for me to use a word that she has never even heard before LOL. Or I use some word like 巻尺 and get laughed at because I guess only obaachans would say that. I have to look up these words in the dictionary to prove to native speakers that they exist. It’s not the majority of the vocab of course, but it’s enough that this has become a pretty regular occurrence for me.
Oh yeah, there are so many threads. Mostly on 里心, though that was removed from WaniKani a while ago.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that WaniKani is here to teach kanji rather than vocab - vocab is included only as examples of kanji usage rather than being a comprehensive survey of modern vocabulary.
Also, it’s fairly common for native speakers to tell WaniKani learners “oh, I never use that word”, but the thing is, they still know that word, it’s still a part of the common vernacular.
This really is an important point. Communication changes all the time but it’s still good to know some archaic terms if you happen to speak with older people or consume content made before the great rizzler.
It’s my theory that:
a) Wanikani only teaches vocabulary to the extent that having one or two examples helps remember the readings. “A as in Apple” effect. There’s no intention to give you a working N5 even, vocabulary.
b) The more memorable the example, the better
So b) kind of implies that sometimes it would be a word you use every day, but sometimes it would be a weird one just to be memorable. It would fit with Koichi’s style in the mnemonics and example sentences.
Yeah and I suspect that wasn’t removed because it was uncommon, but because both kanji already had enough examples of the readings used in that one. (and to stop the whining about it, lol)
Yes. I find this fairly often. I agree with the posters who say that the vocabulary is there to help remember kanji, but, I think that it is well worthwhile for the Tofugu team include a short note when appropriate if a word is archaic or unusual.
Even if Wanikani’s main purpose is to learn kanji, it can be very useful to add vocabulary at the same time. But, if learners don’t trust that the vocabulary can be used correctly, they won’t use or practice it. That would be an unfortunate waste of time, and frankly a negative point II’m fine with spending time learning occasionally unusual vocabulary that doesn’t have much use (e.g. 田代島, 顔文字), so long as I know how it is used correctly. I’ve posted recently about my mild frustration with incomplete or misleading definitions (see 親分).
My recent example of being laughed at was using 皮 to talk about something about my skin.
I have to say that having people laugh at you for something that you honestly tried to learn well from Wanikani is a serious negative point. I will have to use my Japanese in a professional context, and I’m not looking forward to telling people that I sound like a fool due to WaniKani.
“WaniKani is here to teach kanji rather than vocab - vocab is included only as examples of kanji usage”
I wouldn’t agree that this is what I would want out of WaniKani - many learners spend a significant amount of time on it daily, and I’d point out that it teaches 6,507 vocabulary words by the end. It would be great if we could use those words effectively, not just use them to learn the 2,000 kanji.
I agree, I’ve run into this issue a lot also! I also think it’s a major downside of learning vocab from a list, with the context sentences all (or mostly) designed to be humorous.
While I empathise with your situation generally, I have found it really doesn’t matter what you do for language learning, you’re going to make so many mistakes (with output especially) that you may as well be the fool now and get all the mistakes outta the way and use those situations of searing hot embarrassment to remember things like ‘Oh, I guess you use 皮膚 for a person’s skin and 皮 is more like fur or a nut shell or whatever’, because that’s quite useful in its own way
Like, professional situation or not, most people will make allowances for language learners
Also true. At some point I became fully immune to being laughed at. Yesterday I made a mistake that caused someone to roar with laughter and the conversation stopped for about a full minute, and I have to say the only thing I felt was a twinge of sympathetic amusement and a vague appreciation of the fact that he enjoyed the experience.
This is not directly related but a family friend (a JPN law professor!) laughed when I said I was born in the year of the goat (it’s the year of the sheep in Japanese) – but that’s because in Chinese, it is the year of the goat, they have the same character! Now that one I got a bit miffed about!
Perhaps not, but ultimately that’s just how WaniKani was designed. Irrespective of their trumpeting about “learn over 6000 words!” in advertising, WaniKani is a kanji-learning website.
In a way, probably all vocabularies here are useful for listening (and conversation), as well as reading, as they know how to use them. But not necessarily for production, if you can’t find a proper place to use those.
I guess the answer is to read & listen as widely as you can paying attention to which words are being used and when. To be a good speaker in any language you have to be attuned to register - how you speak with your friends, what words you use are going to be different from how you would speak and what words you would use when giving a work presentation. Take the English words “purchase” and “buy” - you’d raise a few eyebrows if you announced you were just ducking out to purchase your lunch
Language learning is hard. I certainly don’t laugh at my 2 year old when she says things like “The paper is broken” after she ripped her coloring paper by accident. I figure out what she meant to say and help her learn from her mistakes, because mistakes will happen.
Even if WK had only common words you will make mistakes, all you can do is take it in stride and if you find that certain people make fun of you repeatedly, remind them that you’re trying your best and you’d really like it if they could correct you without laughing.
But also sometimes the laughter really is just genuine joy. I’ve experienced both, and I think the best thing is to just interact minimally with the people who laugh because they’re looking down on you. Those people suck and you’re better off not engaging.
The guy who laughed at me yesterday was really nice and we got along really well, so it genuinely wasn’t a mean laugh, just a laugh. I didn’t take it personally, I just shrugged and learned something.
Hey, that’s actually funny! I really should find an opportunity to use it in sooner rather than later
I will some times throw curved balls out there like “I’ll be with you presently” simply because they confuse the hell out of people
Also… not nearly enough people are using “ought to…” these days… such a cute word
On a more serious note:
It seems to me Japanese is more susceptible of becoming ‘outdated’ quickly?
I mentioned in another thread that I like JP films from the 40s-50s-60s (not period dramas, whatever was ‘contemporary’ at the time) and there the dialogue is quite different from current productions.
There was a reply along the lines of “those are using archaic language” which… yeah, fair enough - even native speakers acknowledge the gaps between these periods.
But think about US or UK films from the same periods: there’s hardly any English in them that sounds “off” to our ears. Okay maybe a word or expression here and there, yet no more than that…
