Some of the kanji etc that are introduced really bother me with how they’re ordered. I’m only on level 14, so I don’t know how many more examples I’ll come across, but at level 13 you learn 謝 (apologise) but the whole right side of that is 射 (shoot, archery) which is coming up at level 34!
The mnemonics are so much easier if you’ve already learned 射, because then 謝 is “Your words shoot out rapid fire as you apologise”. Why would you not introduce them in a logical sequential way?
The one that really made me stop and think “Hang on a second… why??” is 例. They introduced 行 (row) and then 例 (example) in level 14. Looking ahead, 列 is coming up in level 15. WHY would you not introduce it before 例? Especially seeing as you just taught 行. It should be 行 row, 列 column/line then 例 is super easy because it’s like “The leaders put people in lines and made an example out of them”.
Other examples I’ve come across so far:
花 level 4 but 化 at level 6.
速 at level 10 but 束 comes 4 levels later at 14.
港 is level 12 but 巻 apparently won’t come up until level 25.
join the club
i consistently forget 更 (lvl 22) because the first thing i think is “okay, it’s not 便 (lvl 11)… so what is it?”
and then the radical 更 is level 45
Lol, since having written this, I sat down to do my daily lessons and the word 表情 is one of the words and I realised that 表 came up in level 9, but 衣 hasn’t come up yet. If you learn 衣 first, then 表 would be much easier because you just pop a samurai on top of it. Looks like 衣 will come up at level 22.
Yeah, having to remove something is mentally harder than adding something for some reason. Although I see some words/kanji that I understand why it’s taught in that order, because sometimes the one part is super rare on it’s own, but the more complex kanji is really common. For example 吾 doesn’t pop up anywhere near as much as 語.
The order they teach kanji is some mystery combination of frequency of usage and complexity. Nothing wrong with making your own mnemonic if WK’s is stupid.
Yeah, I tend to make my own mnemonics for almost everything anyway. The Wanikani ones just don’t work for me personally. The mnemonics for reading as well. They have have things like “you send it to someone” when the reading is ト.
Again, maybe that works for some people, but for me it results in remembering it as ツー.
Then you have less common yet more complicated Kanji coming first like
働 coming before 動
Obscure Kanji shouldn’t be prioritized for simplicity imo but if they’re both relatively common prioritizing simplicity makes sense. And it’s a what wanikani claims to do. It’s just not consistent with it.
The order can be pretty weird at times. I like what they’re going for with the radicals, then kanji, then vocabulary, because I feel like it all builds on each other. But the side effect is that there are some really common characters that are taught pretty late into WaniKani because they happen to be complicated. On the flip side, there are some N1 kanji that are taught pretty early on because they’re so simple to construct, so it goes both ways.
i’ve found myself slightly confused as they introduce new radicals on lower levels, or move radicals and kanji between levels — a few times recently realized i was learning a radical that’s a part of kanji and vocab i’ve burned 10 levels ago or something. it’s not a problem, as those burned items i already know, but i have wondered at whether it might interference with my ability to recall these in the long run as the mnemonics might overlap and interfere with each other or something…?
Very true. There really is no “perfect" order, but I really think there are some cases where the order would make more sense. I guess it’s a case of how far someone plans to study. If you intend on learning them all, then a logical order would be best. If you just want to be able to recognise the more common words, then frequency would be best. And like you say, something like Wanikani gets stuck in the middle with everyone complaining, lol.
My bad, you’re right (and thanks for pointing that out). I think it’s because I haven’t actually gotten far enough to learn that kanji yet, but I’ve seen 春巻き, they look kind of similar and I think my brain just thought they were the same.
正 is being taught as a radical for correct at level 9. The same is taught as kanji with the same meaning at level 2. Why is it a radical now? I already know it, I’ve been practicing it in vocab for months.
Same with 台 . Level 3 taught as kanji, level 9 taught as a radical. Ok, it might be used in mnemonics later as machine instead of (private + mouth) but a that point I already recognise it as machine, I don’t need a more basic checkpoint with no readings to check that I know it.
I know they reteach previous kanji as radicals because as the kanji get more complicated it’s easier to use the kanji meaning plus the made-up radicals together to make a more memorable mnemonic.
It can definitely be annoying though if the radical meaning and the kanji meaning are drastically different. I remember 一 as ground as a radical and then 1 as a kanji and I did not like that
The system isn’t perfect but it’s quite good mostly. The kanji-as-radical is indeed to simplify the future mnemonics and it does make sense to do it that way. It typically just means some easy items in your reviews for those ones.
Yeah I do think on of the weirdest things about WaniKani is the reluctance to use other kanji in mnemonics which creates this issue. In later levels they create “radicals” that just are previously learned kanji.
I ended up using a lot of my own mnemonics in the later levels. I didn’t want to have to learn two (one for meaning and one for reading) so I’d combine into a single one whenever possible and relying on previously learned kanji as well.
In the end there’s no ideal way to order the kanji you learn. They had to pick something and went with this.
