I went through both Human Japanese and Human Japanese Intermediate, as well as the anki decks before using WK. As long as you stick to it and keep coming back day after day to do your reviews and lessons, you will get there. For me, it has been pretty slow, but after over a year, I’m over half way there. Just keep looking forward to that next moment when you realize “oh, I can read that!”. Those times where you get that, and when you realize you know 10% of all the kanji, etc, can be a huge boost to your moral. I really didn’t think I’d ever get to knowing 2000+ kanji back when I started learning Japanese. I knew it was possible, but I didn’t think I had it in me, but because I stuck to it, I really feel like I’ll get there, albeit, slowly.
I originally went for a year subscription, but I just recently got lifetime. I probably didn’t need it to get through everything, but it’s nice not having to think about my subscription running out at some point.
I see, my mistake. It’s because you asked if learning kanji is wasted time, that’s where I misunderstood you. If you want to learn Japanese, then learning kanji is never wasted time (in fact, it’s a prerequisite). If you don’t want to learn Japanese, then learning kanji is indeed a waste of time.
I’d like to put myself forward as a success story. I’m now, at my level, able to read light novels and manga.
Not super fluently, mind you. I keep a dictionary next to me and it’s sometimes hard work. But I can read with relative ease and without stopping every sentence to analyze the grammar, structure, or kanji. It’s still work - it’s still studying.
I studied Japanese for years before finding WaniKani. So my grammar is relatively high, and my vocabulary was also pretty good before I started. But WaniKani has built it up magically! From level 40 and onwards I suddenly became able to read better, and it’s helped my speaking slightly as well.
Here’s the thing: it’s still hard work and it’s still years of work.
Unless you’re dedicating many hours every week to studying the language (or are living immersed in it), it’s a long road ahead of you. And that’s fine, that’s how most people learn languages. If you stick with WaniKani and study grammar, I very much believe you’ll be able to read your book on Zen and music in some two years, maybe less. But it will depend on you, and how much you invest.
Oh I see. What I wanted to say was: does this really work or is it too much work for an average westerner to learn a language like japanese at all? I agree with you, learning japanese only make sense with learning Kanji and vice versa.
I’m a bit earlier in my journey than some of the other posters, but I can go ahead and say that WK has been massively useful in my kanji learning even at this stage. I started reading NHK Easy articles a couple days ago, and I recognize at least half of the kanji-based vocab. There are three things I think WK does really, really well. First, it makes learning kanji accessible for new learners; second, the curated list of vocab to reinforce kanji is invaluable; third, the fact that WK teaches the multiple readings for kanji and vocab is amazing and is something that’s neglected by most other resources. WK is also very accessible and customizeable via community-made user scripts!
All that said, there are a handful of caveats. You may have heard a lot of people criticizing WK mnemonics – those people are perfectly justified in doing so. Once you’ve gotten out of the first few levels and have an idea of what you’re doing, you’ll notice that a lot of the mnemonics are bad. Really bad. You’ll probably wind up having to make your own. WK lets you make your own though, and you’d always have to be making your own without WK (or have another resource handy like Kodansha). Second, WK isn’t always as mindful of Japanese grammar as it should be: Sometimes you’ll get something like 好き with ‘like’ as the main definition which is a bit misleading.
Those few gripes aside, WK works. It’s often grueling (at higher levels you’ll wind up with 150 - 200 reviews a day), but that’s Japanese for you – if we wanted something easy, we would’ve learned Mandarin!
PS. Shoutout to another HJ reader! I haven’t finished it, but it’s definitely my favorite of the intro-level textbooks.
It’s constructed with a delicacy and respect for Japanese that’s rare to find in language learning apps. And it’s clear from the outset that the maker took a human approach, that’s why I loved it so much. It’s not just a textbook, it’s a story, a journey with a man who also loves Japan.
Well, exactly one year ago, I had just learned hiragana and was still learning katakana, and knew no kanji. A few weeks before that, I knew absolutely no Japanese whatsoever.
Today, I can read some novels and manga with considerable confidence, and understand a considerable deal of spoken Japanese. That’s mostly thanks to WK, though of course I had to study a lot of grammar on the side.
So it worked really well for me, but as everyone else said, you have to put in the time and effort. If I hadn’t studied every day this last year, things probably wouldn’t have gone so well.
Wanikani has absolutely been worth it–and I say that as someone who started out strong, and then struggled, and then got back on track. Last year I had to reset my level from 42 back to 30 because I quit doing my reviews without setting vacation mode…for more or less eight months. Even with the reset, I still had 1,000+ review items to gruelingly get leveled up and it’s taken me since last July to get back to Level 42. And even with that delay, it’s been worth it. I’ve had so much more success retaining kanji through this method than through traditional classroom methods. And as others have already mentioned, it’s made it so I can guess at the pronunciations and meanings of vocabulary I don’t know, read short stories, twitter, etc. It’s definitely not an all-inclusive resource since it doesn’t teach grammar, but there is now another SRS called BunPro that does now.
I started using WK around the time I started learning the language. I had moved to the countryside of Japan for work, and essentially it was my way of becoming more independent. I credit WK for being one of the game-changing resources to improve my quality of life. It does work and now everyone thinks I’m a genius, but it was really effective for me to learn a lot in a short amount of time.
I recommend you get a lifetime subscription later because if you’re committed to learning Japanese there’s a possibility that you’ll forget kanji from time to time as mentioned by Napthalene. WK is good but like all things, anything that go out of practice will soon be forgotten. There are kanji that I’ve studied here but simply didn’t have enough exposure to them after burning them that eventually caused me to forget their reading, meaning, or the fact that I studied it in the first place. Because you are studying the kanji over a relatively shorter period of time, it is possible to forget a few from time to time. So I felt it was a good investment especially since I got lifetime on sale.
Like I said above, many people I’ve met are blown away that I can actually read and speak despite being in Japan for a relatively short period of time. Although being a Japanese is difficult to get an initial handle on in the beginning, with time and effort you’ll understand that your learning has more to do with your attitude (outlook), exposure, and use of Japanese. There are many people who become fluent despite being from the West as well as Japanese who become fluent in English despite it being very challenging for them.
To be fair, you’re asking this question on a forum where quite a few people would consider themselves ‘an average westener’. You simply have to look at peoples’ levels to see whether it really works or not.
But I think the main point of your post that grabbed my attention was ‘is it too much work?’
As with pretty much everything in life, you will get out of it what you put into it.
If you sit back and think ‘No, this is too much work, an average westerner like myself can’t do it’, then of course you’re going to struggle. But, if you think to youself ‘Right, it’s time for a challenge! Let’s do this!’, and you actively put in the effort to remember the information WK is providing you, and it will stick.
I’ll try to add something even though I’m quite new around here as you can see by my level. Try to study using other sites and try to read manga and books, it will create a wonderful synergy. I’m currently studying using WK, Rosetta Stone and Duolingo (and have one manga here waiting me a little bit for when I fell ready) and the fact that I’m starting to see Kanji that I learned here on the other sites and kanjis that I learned on the other sites here makes everything connect and easier.
For example, I first learned the vocab. 上 (うえ, above) here. It was all disconected to how can I use this word in a phrase. In less than a week I started a lesson on Rosetta Stone that taught me exactly how to say that “something is above something” and things like that and the magic was that I already knew the vocabulary and the kanji, so I could focous 100% in learning the grammar. That sold WK for me!
Believe it or not, I’ve actually found WaniKani has been helping me in a couple of cases specifically with Zen. I’m not studying/practicing, but my partner is, so I hear a lot of the terms from him. When I just hear the phonetics, it can be hard to remember the terms, but when they’re attached to kanji I find them very very easy to remember.
Just the other day I realized that seiza (正座) is just “correct sit”. 正 is a lvl 2 kanji, so you should already have it. My partner did yaza (夜座) this past weekend, which I now know is “night sit”. I recognize the first half of samu (作務). I now know that the tenzo’s title is written 典座. I’m sure there are many others I haven’t even realized yet.
… and, this isn’t Zen related, but literally just now I looked up at the Rikai-kun button in my browser and realized I could read/understand the Kanji on it (理). Yesterday I was able to read half of the back of a package on a 一人用カードゲイム (solitaire game) I ordered recently.
I find I’m running into words I suddenly recognize everywhere I look! So, even if you haven’t gotten to the point yet where you can read manga or websites, even early on, knowing the kanji for individual words can still be super helpful.
So, I’m level 8 about to be level 9 when I do like 8 reviews after I post this message.
I took two years of college Japanese about 10 years ago, and wanted to get back into it. This was part of it.
I’m not far along, but I’m doing better than I did when actively taking a course in some ways.
So, today I got on NKH news Easy, which is a part of my daily Japanese practice, to stumble through one article until I get frustrated and or bored. Today was the first time I really got something, like clearly. It’s a simple article (on JR Honshyuu selling tours on Alibaba’s website) but I Understood It. This was not possible 3 months ago for me. And I see so many of the kanji I’m learning here. I may not have the readings perfect, I may pause or be confused, but it is coming together in a way I hadn’t expected . I call that a success.
Keep at it. Japanese is hard, but exposure, time and persistance will make you better.
I was able to understand a talkative old guy that owned a cafe in a small town in Tochigi when he asked for my name (お兄ちゃんの名前？) and after I was done with my coffee told me to go left towards the mountain to check… something, before taking the train back to where I was staying. Of course, I don’t know what he wanted me to actually do so I just wandered for a bit before I had to go take my train He was a nice guy.
For real though, I had an easier time getting around in Japan and buying stuff.
Exchange rates are a huge barrier! I live in Southern Africa and there is no way I could afford the subscription. (If I received ‘life time’ as a gift, I would stick with the method) but there are lots of free resources out there. A second hand copy of RTK is a good way to start…
