For me as a native German speaker, it would be great to see a translation from Japanese to German next to the English translation of a particular word. An additional direct translation conveys the meaning of a word better than an indirection through a potentially broad/weak English term, even if you include the example sentences.
I totally get it that it is close to impossible to maintain all the nice stories, mnemonics and puns in several languages. But only showing a second, native language translation would help a lot, e.g., through an automated lookup in Takoboto or so (not manually through user synonyms). Itâs totally OK to keep entering the English answers.
I regularly have this âOhhhh thatâs what it really meansâ feeling when I see a word learned through Wanikani in the ăżăăȘăźæ„æŹèȘ (German) vocabulary⊠anyone else having this feeling?
I definitely get you - especially when English doesnât quite have a matching word but your native language does (for example, äčăć Ž has a bunch of translations listed that can all just be summarised in the Dutch word âhalteâ - I figure German probably has a word for the same concept).
Iâm not sure I see a way to both facilitate this and keep things maintainable, though, given the diversity of WaniKaniâs userbase. Thatâs a lot of potential languages to account for.
As a fellow learner who is not a native English speaker, I agree that it can be a struggle to depend on English as the main language for learning another language. There arenât a whole lot of resources available in my own native language so I donât have much choice. The amount of times Iâve had to jump loops between dictionariesâŠMerriam-Webster is one of my most frequently used sites, heh.
While I do agree that having keywords in my native language could help, Iâm not sure how viable that is on a practical level. German keywords wouldnât help me in any case. WaniKani team would have to include a lot of languages for it to benefit their whole userbase, which sounds like a lot of work. But who knows - maybe it is simpler than Iâm expecting.
Sure it does! Just like Gliasâing (y-youâre [the phrase you just wrote]!) or pulling a Powerpuncher (being the only one voting the other option in a poll).
Like in this poll, perfect chance to pull a powerpuncher:
Regarding the maintenance thing: I think itâs actually not that hard. You do a lookup in a dictionary like Takoboto or JMDict. Thereâs no maintenance besides the code for the lookup and Takoboto/JMDict have a good bunch of languages included, plus JMDict is CC licensed.
The feature kinda exist with the user synonyms, just having the ability to toggle âshow my synonym (or explanation) firstâ or so would already help, at least in my case.
I get the frustration though.
To be frank, at level 44, you should be consulting J-J dictionaries, not translations. Set up Yomichan with a few (or look it up on gooèŸæž, etc), and try to stick to Japanese websites for further clarification. The nuance of many words on WaniKani is lost even in their English translations (request/demand, pleasant, desire/ambition/will, etc). If I can do that now at level 33, surely you can, too.
@Megamind So true, and the examples are spot on. What is a J-J dictionary do you use? If I look on the Yomichan site, I see only bilingual? Or maybe I am blind.
And is there an option for Android? I learn 99% of the time on mobile. I checked the dictionary recommendations on Tofugu, but they are either paper or iOS.
