"Skip Radicals"

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
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So I know this has been asked for before, but is there a userscript that will automagically mark all my radicals as completed and/or just make them completely ignorable? If not, why? Is the limitation on what WK’s API allows you to do?

I don’t want this to turn into an argument about why radicals should be there, etc. I do not use the mnemonics because mnemonics don’t work for me in the long run, so it makes no sense for me to lose level up time because of a missed radical that impedes the kanji I can begin learning.

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There’s a script that will let every answer you enter be accepted, so obviously it can be done.

If someone hasn’t made one specifically for radicals, why not just use override. You don’t actually have to spend that long on them.

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You can just use the override script to mark it as correct or add a synonym for all of them like “radical” or something

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Ok, that may work, is there anyway to just skip them completely (not make me wait 4 days to learn the kanji)?

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If you could do that, people would be able to skip any content they wanted to, and we wouldn’t have to say “no you have to start at level 1” 8 times a day.

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Curious, before I @ some WK people and waste their time, has “skipping radicals/kanji/vocab” or “skipping” levels ever been addressed by them (are they flat out saying they won’t do it, are they saying they don’t have time, is it in the works, etc)?

EDIT: I’m strictly talking about the API here, not the site.

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The site would have to make skipping content possible, there’s nothing people who make scripts can do to get around that. So no one is working on it.

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I’m not talking about scripters, I’m talking about WK devs (API dev).

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They have never given any indication they ever plan to make skipping content part of the site in any respect, API or otherwise.

EDIT: Have you considered just using Anki or something. If you’re not using mnemonics at all, when that’s most of what WK’s offering in terms of content, it seems like you’d be better off with a free SRS program.

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I tried Anki (granted, very briefly) and didn’t like it. It just didn’t “jive” with me. The cost of WK is well worth it to me since it’s working very well as a motivator and it costs less than a cup of coffee a week.

@koichi @viet do you guys have anything on the project timeline that might allow scriptwriters or users to skip radicals for example?

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As far as I know this will never happen. It goes against the core and teaching methodology of the app.

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Thanks for the response. Makes sense, just thought I’d ask.

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Any plans to allow scripts to mark items and guru/burn without ever having to touch them? This way I can completely ignore the purpose of WaniKani, and look totally smart and awesome to everyone?

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There’s actually a script for that.

You’re missing my point though, I do not use radicals at all. I don’t retain information via mnemonics, I tried it for a while and I couldn’t get anything past Guru whereas now, not using the mnemonics, I’m hardly ever dropping things down from Guru.

Everyone learns differently. I understand that WK has it’s own philosophy though and I respect that they’re sticking to it.

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Not a dig at you personally. More of just a joke on how we see people come in all the time wanting to skip levels completely. Related to your request a bit, but not meant as a direct attack at you, but at those that take your request to the extreme.

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We’ll add it to our Q4 roadmap. :slight_smile:

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I mean as far as I can think you can actually read ahead if you want to - once youre paid you can see the kanji for any level you want. I’m not sure if there is a script like the self quiz script that lets you practice the later kanji/vocab in advance of actually unlocking it. Obviously you dont get the benefits of SRS but you could always read ahead and import into Anki or so

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I feel that too. I tried doing one of those Core anki decks and everything seems just overwhelming. I can’t take words seriously there. In here, everything is more slow paced. I feel like every single Kanji/vocab matters. Also, I’m not an expert in working with Anki.

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Yah, that’s not a bad idea, I’ll give it a try and see if it sticks. Motivation is my biggest foe, which WK has been excellent at helping me with. Nothing more motivating than knowing you have 80 more reviews coming up in 4 hours when you have 150 in the queue now. Gotta do them before they combine forces!

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I completely agree. Wanikani is like one of those soul-crushing facebook games where your potatoes will die in three hours unless you water them. Except you are actually accomplishing something instead of just having the illusion of such. People pay real money for fake money there because they’re too lazy to wait, I’d much rather pay real money ask my mom to pay real money and be forced to wait at wanikani because here it’s in my best interest.

I’m an autodidact (as I’m sure many of us are) but what I want to learn is dependent on whim. I could not structure and adhere to a Japanese-learning regimen on my own and would probably end up researching Japanese clan feuds in the Sengoku period or teaching myself Hangul if left to my own devices. I learned Hiragana in 12 hours with tofugu’s guide and Katakana in six but you can’t learn Kanji in a binge like that.

I do sympathize with you. Myself I only learn some of the mmemonics from the beginning, they do help with words/pronunciations that I don’t pick up immediately or intuitively. Of those where I use the mmemonic initially, in most cases over time the mmemonic is forgotten-- the mmemonic itself is something extra remember and while it helps (for me) in encoding memory it becomes inefficient during retrieval. We remember what our brain thinks is important and if the mmemonic isn’t necessary for us it will be tabled (in the American English sense)-- almost nothing is truly forgotten once it is encoded, mmemonics are designed to be memorable and the ones that resonate more with us (there are some mmemonics I remember begrudgingly because I hate them) certainly will be. What I mean is you skip the mmemonic in the active recall process and remember it separately. I find it an amusing “game” to be trying to remember the original mmemonics for things, akin to “reverse engineering” them.

I’m curious, how many people utilize the hints? Personally I have a very strong verbal memory and I rarely do. i don’t find the sympathetic exercises to be helpful at all (the ones that are like “feel the pain of being stabbed by a hundred tiny dwarfs” but I like the “thought experiment ones”, like “think how weirdly redundant ‘tiny dwarfs’ is”… erm…

Anydayway, I relate to you with wanting to skip some radicals. Not because I never use mmemonics, but because mmemonics solely based on wanikani-exclusive radicals encourage you to put visuals above meaning, but I like remembering “true” radicals and their myriad nuances. My brain finds real albeit complex systems more valuable than artificial ones. I remember radicals for their meaning more than their shape, and instead of simplifying things it is a huge nuisance to think of 扌 as “nailbat” while simultaneously knowing it’s a component form of hand. (and it looks like it too) To me, component forms are very notable and I wish WK would treat them as such rather than separate radicals. For example I just learned 今 now. It does look like a ra with a hat but I know the hat is actually a component form of the person radical and with that line under it it means “cover”, while “ra” isn’t even a real radical. For the kana it doesn’t matter how they are remembered because their only “meaning” is phonetic, but for radicals I end up having to remember multiple meanings. Remembering the “real” meaning feels much more natural to me than the arbitrary ones I would never have come up with myself. While I generally add synonyms in these cases, I always fear the synonym somehow won’t be accepted. (I mistakenly thought I added “work” as a synonym to the construction kanji, when really I only added it to the radical.) So I input them the Wanikani way and tell myself, “I wrote X, but really it’s Y”. I really do think it would be helpful to skip radicals like “raptor cage”, “two-face”, and “poop”. Mullet doesn’t bother me much because it has no inherent meaning, so it’s described variously as “dotted cliff”, “cliff with a building on it”, etc.

In case anyone is curious about radicals, this is a great place to look. http://www.joyokanji.com/radical-notes

And this is the most comprehensive radical/component (something not distinguished on WK, could any upper levels tell me if this changes, especially for phonetic components?) list I’ve seen. Radicals and Components - Kanshudo

Apologies for the length. :slight_smile:

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