If you ever decide to switch your keyboard to start typing in Japanese, you will immediately notice the importance of typing the correct hiragana. So you must learn the correct way to say/write things.
You also mentioned that you want to know what each kanji may mean. I want to warn you so you don’t waste your time. Just because you might know what a base kanji means, that does not mean you’ll be able to understand Japanese or the exact meaning that is being portrayed. WaniKani will teach you the meaning of the kanji. But the more important thing will be learning the vocabulary associated with that kanji not just the kanji itself.
Thanks. I’ll check that out… As irritated as I get at times with WaniKani, I really DO like the site’s interface…and their approach to learning…esp the bit about intentionally making us wait a bit, before we are prompted to try and recall that which we’ve already mastered. I also appreciate all the time that clearly went into their giving us hints/little stories, on how to remember various radicals, etc.
That said… I just now was starting a new set of kanji to learn, here on WK. And I came upon the verb for ‘to enter’. It said something like 'based upon what you already know about the kanji for ‘enter’, can you guess what the reading for ‘to enter’ is? So I thought to myself…'well, the reading for the kanji for enter is ‘nyuu’, so the verb must be ‘nyuuru’? (which I DID think sounded odd…for a verb to begin with the ‘ny’ sound). But nope…it’s not ‘nyuuru’; it’s …‘hairu’(??) Then under the Reading section for this same verb, it threw a new term my way… “okurigana” (my first time ever hearing that term).
When learning the radicals and kanji, and when it gets into talk of kun’yomi vs on’yomi (and more recently, the terms ‘jukugo’ and ‘rendaku’…Argh!) that really is diving in way more deeply than I care for. I have zero expectations or hopes of ever ‘reading’ Japanese…I just want the ability to quickly scan a restaurant menu, or signage at a park, and to have a general sense of what’s being said. My primary goal for studying Japanese has always been the ability to Converse (understand and speak).
Maybe I’ll still use WaniKani, but at the same time, not beat myself up so much for not moving through the various learning levels here, as much as I might like. (I like to ‘excel’ at anything I put my mind to, so this is part of where my frustration comes from. But at the same time, I need to keep reminding myself that I’ve already progressed well beyond where I was previously, and that many other (non-Japanese) people in the world wouldn’t even consider attempting that which we here are trying to accomplish.
If the waiting is what you like, any srs system (wk, anki, renshuu) works that way.
As far as hints/stories go, they’re not connected, but users make mnemonics in renshuu that can be up and down voted so that the most memorable and effective ones are easily visible.
If you don’t want to learn kanji readings then you might consider defining a user synonym of “x” for every kanji item; then when a kanji reading question comes up you can enter “x” to get it out of your way rather than learning it. Since WK doesn’t support suspending or removing srs items I think that’s probably the best you can do.
I kind of get what you’re aiming for. Maybe Remembering The Kanji is really what you need for your goal, instead of WaniKani (which aims to teach you the reading of kanji, not just “interpretation” (what you seem to aim for). You can learn them via Anki, there’s a RTK deck for it. Maybe not that fancy like WaniKani, but overall the same concept. Or as others mentioned, install a usersript for Anki Mode here while doing your reviews so you don’t have to bother with the correct writing.
Regarding your example of the reading guessing of a new vocab based on the previous learned kanji: If you look closely while the kanji introduction, they actually show you already all its readings, e.g. for 入 you can already see, it can be read as はい or even い besides にゅう:
Edit: And regarding the new terms for those hiragana after a kanji: From my understanding, WaniKani tries to give some more information to help build up a deeper understanding. And to know, or at least once heard of, those terms can help for more research if one wants to/needs to.
I personally appreciate those bits of knowledge.
Hope you’ll find a learning style that fits your needs soon!
The idea that every kanji has a definitive “meaning” that you can learn in isolation will prove to be wrong as you progress further in you studies.
Many of the more advanced and especially abstract kanji will have even more “meanings” listed in dictionaries than readings. And they seem to get those meanings by being used in many compound words.
WK just picks one of those meanings to teach. Those multiple meanings may represent some basic common concept and learning one meaning will help with remembering.
But do not expect to understand more than basic signs about mostly concrete things and objects.
In the end we will all have to learn a lot of vocab.
Let me add an example: In the beginning you learn 山 (mountain) and 火 (fire) and then you learn 火山 (= fire mountain = volcano) and you think that if you learn all the meanings you will understand Japanese.
But then look at a common word like 絶対に (absolutely). I have no idea how you would get that meaning from looking at the separate kanji meanings. And WK uses a different meaning than the ones listed here
Here’s a link to the mentioned userscript Anki Mode. There you’ll find further information how to install it.
Just one little tip after you successfully installed it and want to use it for your next reviews: Since WaniKani changed the behavior of their site, you have to refresh your review page (e.g. via hitting the key F5 on your keyboard or clicking that refresh button on your browser in the top next to the address bar) so the userscript actually starts working. (If I understood correctly, just by switching from your dashboard into the reviews via the review button, the page doesn’t actually reload/refresh in that sense, so usersripts can’t recognize that they have to do something.)
Oh, and just keep in mind: userscripts are a third-party-script from WaniKanis point of view. So whenever they change something on their page/server, it might break the script and one has to wait until the creator updates their script. (But you can always deactivate scripts, so you still can do the reviews as before - well, just without the deactivated script, of course)
I had the same experience. I wen to Renshuu instread for a while. over time however i realized that Bunpro is the objectively better method, it’s just bad at explaining how to use it. ultimately Bunpro, Renshuu, etc will be a bad tool to learn from. these are tools to aid in study, they aren’t instructors or textbooks. I’d recommend using them as supplements to Genki or Tae Kim (or both)
as a side note, I tried RTK first and hated it, although bringing it up does remind me that WaniKani hasn’t been grilling me on stroke order and perhaps I should revisit RTK for that.
And that’s a valid choice.
But unlike in Chinese when you can completely ignore pronunciation and tones and just look at the kanji, in Japanese you are never certain a word won’t be spelled in kana, so you must also know the kana spelling (note I say “spelling” and not “pronunciation”).
You cannot, for example, just know 少し、熊、猫because some times they are spelled すこし、くま、ねこ
(and on the other way too, コーヒー, きりん, たくさん, どこ can be written 珈琲、麒麟、沢山、何処)
Japanese is probably the only current language that uses (and you need to know) two different scripts interchangeably.
If I was trying to match your desired learning objectives to a system or tool for studying I would probably go with one that teaches and quizzes only the meaning of Kanji, then you could avoid having to deal with readings completely. I expect that you could configure Anki to do this for you. This would allow you to study kanji (meaning) only and not have to deal with any vocabulary.
Personally I do not think this would be a good approach, for lots of reasons as mentioned by many others, especially in the long term.
Thanks. If you are trying to say that it’s important for me to also know kana, I do in fact already know hiragana and katakana. However, I know that it’s also useful to know some kanji, particularly when trying to scan a restaurant menu, for e.g. (And though there is the option to use Google Translate/camera, I also know that that can become burdensome after a while, especially for a multi-page menu…)
While I do know that many signs in municipal buildings, parks, museums etc. may have signs in kanji, I also know that furigana may be included on such signs. Nonetheless, I feel that my knowing some kanji certainly can’t hurt.
My personal opinion is that learning the meanings without knowing how to read or say the words won’t be great in the long term, but everyone’s journey is different so…
You might consider checking out the app Tsurukame. It uses the Wanikani API and it’s pretty similar in appearance, but it has an option called “Anki Mode” for reviews that is described as “Do reviews without typing answers” - basically, flashcard-style.
Maybe this would let you take advantage of the things you like about Wanikani without having to type the readings?
