I’ve been using wanikani for 4 months or so and am really enjoying it! I think that using mnemonics instead of rote memorization has helped with my kanji learning tremendously.
There is one thing that has been bugging me though. Whenever there is a vocabulary with a rendaku, the tip is usually something along the lines of “watch out for that rendaku!” It feels a lot like rote memorization and I always have a harder time with rendaku’d vocabulary.
I think that it would be helpful to have a character or keyword that shows up whenever there is a rendaku’d vocabulary. Maybe something like Leonardo De’Vinci, the Rennaisance painter.
Just a suggestion! I still love wanikani and want to thank the Tofugu team for creating such a great tool!
I just there was a reliable rule for rendaku. There are just so many cases where I’d expect it (or not) based on others but it just doesn’t happen. I’ve asked friends if they have any insight, but even native Japanese speakers can only remember it なんとなく (direct quote )
I guess this is how everyone else feels learning English…
Yeah, the article I linked above provies some “guidelines” where you can expect Rendaku to occur, but there are, of course, a lot of excepction that will have to be memorized. But, at least the number of exceptions that you have to learn is way less than the number of rendaku’d words where you have to remember that they have rendaku. Overall, these rules have helped me a lot with rendaku, and I only very rarely fail reviews because of Rendaku nowadays.
)