*some* Radicals are bs

OMG :slight_smile: I haven’t got to that level yet so for me it’s still a grave that you open to get to your room.

boob grave… :shivers:

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I was also wondering why you needed to “relearn” radicals that are just kanji you already know, but I did think of one possible reason - if you’ve already burned the kanji in question, you may not necessarily remember it. For example, I’ve had the first three levels burned for a while, and when one of the kanji was made into a radical I was actually kind of grateful that I was getting the chance to reinforce it first, before being asked to use it in a mnemonic.

Of course, there could be better ways to deal with that. I’m not necessarily defending the system, just trying to figure out why it’s there :woman_shrugging:

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It could also be there to purposefully slow people down. Cynics would say that that’s to make people take longer so WaniKani makes more money. But it could also be to prevent people from burning out and stopping altogether. So still to make more money, but for a more positive reason.

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If burned means that you no longer remember something, then this system is entirely flawed

To be honest, I don’t really like the way levels are implemented. You get massive lessons two times a week and if you choose to distribute them, your level will take much much longer. I don’t see a reason why you couldn’t implement a system in which new kanji and vocab are unlocked during the week and still have about the same progression rate. You could for instance say that there may not be more than 200 items below guru. Each time something levels up from apprentice, something new would be unlocked.

You actually can distribute your kanji more evenly over the week, you just need a script to do it. I do dislike that it’s not built-in feature, but hey, that’s precisely what scripts are for. I do 7 kanji lessons and 14 vocab lessons a day, and feel less overwhelmed as a result.

As to forgetting burned items, that’s not a fault of the system, it’s the fault of our brains. I’d love to get information permanently tattooed on my brain, but I messed up adding 8+6 yesterday, and I’ve been doing basic addition for 20 years, so clearly these things just happen sometimes.

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Yes this is a fault of the brain, but the SRS should minimize the effect. If burned isn’t enough, there should be a stage after burned. Of course there are different nuances of ‘memorized’. It’s completely normal that you cannot translate a word from another language even though you know what it means. Does this count as unknown? No, of course not, because you can still use the word. Just the connection between the english word and the translation has weakend. If you completely forget what something means, then the SRS hasn’t done its part.
I know this very well because English isn’t my first language. Translating is very hard for me, I just think German or I think English. Many words I have learned competely in-context, thus never having seen the ‘true’ translation. Without looking up, it can be very hard to translate it the same way. At the same time, I have never forgot what a word means in English, once I really knew what is was about.
Maybe this is different for out-of-context learning, but I don’t really think so. (In-context is learning by listening to conversations or reading text; out-of-context is learning with vocab material)

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I think SRS does minimize the effect of our brain throwing out unused information. If I burn something and forget it, it’s more easily put back into place. Going through the SRS system is like building shelves to put knowledge on. Sometimes things fall off after you’ve built it and arranged everything how you like, but you’ve already done the hard part—it just might need occasional maintenance.

And learning something in-context helps more than out-of-context. At least, I think this is more true in the case of Japanese, which is quite different from languages with shared roots, like English and German.

I hope I’m not coming off as rude, that is far from my intention, I just noticed you seem frustrated with the system.

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I feel similar to that when it comes to the “gun” radical. What is it about the USA and this fetish?

Like you said, it needs occaisonal maintainance, so level after burned wouldn’t hurt.
You also mentioned the similarity of German and English, but this is only half true. Yes, half of the words are very similar: to swim - schwimmen; to burn - brennen. But the other half is very, very different. Just by looking at what I typed I can see that many words have their roots in latin, so I actually had to learn them.
Japanese words aren’t hard to pronounce, write and they are short.
Also, I am not frustrated or mad, I just don’t like learning things unnecessarily to waste my time. I have already made nice progress with WaniKani, but that doesn’t mean that WK is perfect. I still have the right to critisize.

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Maybe for some it’s a fetish. But I think most gun owners know enough of American history (and, indeed, world history) to understand that aggregate individual strength is the best defense against tyrrany. In times of peace, it’s easy to forget the long view of history, so it’s not surprising when people don’t understand. But America is young enough that the memory of tyrrany still lingers in our culture.

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I think there was also a Scandinavian in it from some occupation, but there should be bigger experts on this here :slight_smile:

Where is this sound of a derailing train coming from? :upside_down_face:

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Take care about what you say, or we’ll send some thugs down from Canada to burn down your White House again! :smiley: (I’ve always wanted to write “thugs from Canada” - such a wonderful oxymoron.)

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I like the RTK cocoon primitive, I added both.

The so called tyranny, happened to be the people whose land was taken without compensation and whose country was invaded by people with no intention of assimilating into the culture they found.

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Ok, let’s not go there.

Kaaaaanji.

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Definitely. WaniKani works best for me because it’s efficient and fun.

The radicals are completely pointless for me. I’ve stuck with WK because I was pretty deep into it but there are so many problems with it. Radicals are a big one for sure.

@Ateosira,

I really enjoy history now that I don’t have to study it in school. What’s most interesting to me is discovering how different things look after reading contemporaneous accounts from multiple perspectives.

One thing that was really sobering for me was when my wife and I helped our exchange student with her history homework. A lot of events in her textbook were significantly different from what I was taught in school even just 20ish years ago. It was also pretty evident how much each generation’s politics affect views of history… sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Anyway, if you’re interested in history, the early interactions between native americans and colonial settlers is really diverse and interesting. But be careful of any account that lacks contemporaneous citation.

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Fair enough. But you can’t ignore the fact that there are not many Native Americans left. Are you telling me that the history books are wrong and they just disappeared? :slight_smile:

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