It’s not a limitation though, it’s a design choice. Which they have gone to the trouble of explaining. I’m sure you understand that having meanings and readings be reviewed in separate sessions would require two separate levels per item. So you’d have 日 as Apprentice 1 for reading and Guru for meaning, which would, in my opinion, be somewhat chaotic.
Oops, you wrote that as I was typing, but I’m glad it helped 
Yeah… would you theoretically be able to burn a meaning before you even guru’d the reading, and never even unlocked the associated vocab? I just don’t see how they could be on separate SRS tracks without weirdness like that being possible.
Could be implemented either way. Could be “lowest of both”, for example. All in all, it’s a UI choice to display your progress for gamification purposes, seeing “Apprentice” doesn’t make you know a language better.
The difference between apprentice and guru isn’t cosmetic. It’s the line at which items unlock new items, it makes sense to talk about how the system would treat something like that if they weren’t linked.
As I wrote before, I do totally expect to not have new items unlocked util I master both readings and meanings of already unlocked ones.
So then, as I noted, you could burn a meaning (complete its review cycle such that it never shows up for review again) before you’ve gotten the reading to the level where you are unlocking vocab. Then you go through months of just seeing the reading as you level it up, all while never again seeing the meaning.
It’s just weird, and I guess you could argue it’s not super likely to happen, but the fact that it could happen is still weird to me.
But that’s how you want it to function?
Whoa. I was not aware of this possibility. I’d expect SRS quiz me for it at least sometimes. The whole idea of SRS, as I understood from the researchers that came up with the concept, is that you are supposed to review an item at least once in a while. That’s why they say there’s a finite amount of items you can memorise: at some point reviews of old items will take all of your time.
The expectation is that by the time you burn an item, it had been tested against your memory enough times that you will not forget it. You will see an item eight times, over a minimum of roughly six months, before an item reaches that level and you need to have gotten an item correct in review every time before that happens.
If the logic fails and you see the item in the wild and can’t identify it, you can always unburn it, at which point the item gets reset back to Apprentice 1 and you get another eight reviews over about six months.
This is explained here: WaniKani’s SRS Stages
Well, the point is that eventually you should “review” words by seeing them in real life. And if you don’t see something again in real life for years (such that you would need SRS to remember it), is there even a point in knowing it?
Science says there’s no such thing.
So I need to do things manually? While we have all this amazing technology around us?
I actually get peeved by the same thing, but as you go through the levels you’ll realise it’s completely irrelevant. When you start getting 2-300 reviews a day, you will stop caring about the fact that you have to review meaning too many times. Also, as you start unlocking vocabulary, you review meanings and readings several times anyway.
Having a high cost for messing up the reading is good for learning in my opinion.
Interesting thought… Too deep to argue with right away.
I might care even more: I’d be done with reviews much faster if meanings won’t slow me down
Adding unnecessary stress is a feature, you say?..
Really? I remember certain words that I never see in the world. Our brains are quite good at language, in general,.
How is the system meant to know when you’ve seen an item in a book and don’t know it? That’s why it’s a manual choice.
Yes, but your time on level would feel much longer.
That’s my point: it should quiz me from time to time to make sure I didn’t forget.
Say what you want, stress is the main thing that makes you remember things. If there’s no energy cost in looking up something, there’s no reason for you to remember since that space can be used for other things.
Why longer? Should be shorter, no?
Upd.: Ok, I think I get what you imply. A “wallclock”, not “pure time I dedicate for reviews”
No, you said that you’d be perfectly happy if you couldn’t level up until you’d mastered the content.
So instead of the current scenario, where you at least get the satisfaction of knowing the meaning at review, you’d have a system where you’re left having cleared all you meaning reviews and then have a stack of reading reviews coming back over and over again till you get them.
The time would be the same, because you couldn’t level up till you Guru’d both meaning and reading, but would FEEL longer.
So WaniKani would just… never really end? You’d have 8000ish reviews every few months indefinitely?
I mean, you can already do that with scripts if you want, but I feel like not many people would stick with it anyway at that point.
Why would it feel longer? I’m a casual learner, I don’t have much free time in my day, I’d be happy if I’d only need to dedicate 15 minutes a day for reviews, not 30.