I’m looking for a little input. I have been learning Japanese over the last year or so combining Wanikani and Duolingo. I know full well that it’s not ideal but I’m a late starter with a full on job and a few mins a day is basically what I can spare so it works for me
I have been diligent with both, ensuring that I don’t miss a day and stay up to date with my Wanikani reviews.
My problem is that whilst I can see how DL is useful - you learn full sentences and when you learn Kanji it is in context. With WK I learnt kanji standalone and whilst there are context examples you aren’t tested on them so you never get to use what you learn in context.
So WK has become just a way of keeping my mind active, which is a good thing at my age, but just not rewarding enough as I don’t feel like I know how to use what I’m learning.
So I guess my big question is…am I missing something? Is there somewhere where I can practice what I’m learning in WK? If not, I think I am best off using the time I have to focus on DL.
WK is a supplemental tool for those who are serious about building reading skills in Japanese. It’s meant to complement comprehensive classroom courses, grammar study, or other immersion techniques. If speaking and listening are bigger priorities then it makes sense to deprioritize WK. Never used duolingo so no comment on the efficacy of that program.
If you’ve been spending a year diligently using WK and you’re level 6, then IMO something is not working. Maybe it’s just not the right tool for you.
Kanji can be a huge roadblock and distraction when learning to read Japanese. You read something like 彼女は既に家に帰ったので、僕はここに残りたくない and before you can focus on grammar and vocab you have to deal with all these weird characters.
The point of WaniKani is mainly to build up kanji recognition so that you can more easily identify them when reading Japanese text and then focus on the rest of the language. You get huge return over kanji study time early on, because the top ~1000 kanji make up over 80% of all the kanji you’ll encounter in the wild.
It may be a bit of a hot take but I don’t think it makes sense to use WaniKani long term. Actually I think the developers agree, since burned entries never return. I think it makes the most sense to use this website as a “crash course” to cram kanji early on and then use more holistic methods to reinforce that knowledge.
i don’t think it’s that hot take, pretty common consensus that you hit huge diminishing returns after about level 30
WK is a very good tool for learning to read/write Japanese but you have to know how to use it, and sadly I feel WK still to this day tries to sell itself as a one stop shop.
If OP wants to speak/listen then there are better avenues to go down, but eventually they’re gonna have to learn kanji if they’re serious about learning Japanese. Once they get to that point, they will have a much better understand of HOW to study Japanese and will be able to see the pros and cons of the platform, this is all in my opinion anyway.
While I’m at it, I don’t think duolingo is very good, but I know there has been HUGE updates since I last used it so maybe it’s better? I dunno, I would much more recommend a beginners grammar course and THEN pick up WK or RTK or other kanji system once you’ve got N5 grammar under your belt
So I’ve been using Wanikani for a while as well - I reset my progress recently bc I took a long break, and now that I’m feeling more motivated to truly learn the language, I also encountered the same issue you’re facing right now. Which is the fact that Wanikani unfortunately is not a one-stop-shop. I realized too late that, while Wanikani is useful for kanji and some vocab, you can’t use it as your only resource for learning Japanese as a whole. I didn’t find out until recently that Wanikani only teaches you around ~6,000 vocab words, and they’re not even the top 6,000 words in the language - they were picked specifically to help you learn whatever kanji you’re learning at the moment. So yeah.
So what I did is, I went looking for another resource that could help me with both grammar and more vocab than WK teaches, and while there are many great free resources out there (Tae Kim/Cure Dolly for grammar, Anki decks for vocab, etc) I ended up landing on MaruMori. MaruMori is a paid website like WK is, but it offers structure and does advertise itself as a full one-stop-shop. You have “adventure mode” where you can read lessons on grammar, and as you go you unlock kanji and vocab words, and those get taught to you in a very similar fashion as Wanikani does, which I loved. I ended up buying the lifetime subscription for it. So if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop resource that will teach you grammar, kanji, AND vocab, and help you start forming your own sentences and etc, I can’t recommend Marumori enough.
As a final note, I can’t in good conscience recommend Duolingo. I tried it for a bit back in the day and I wasn’t a fan of how scrambled all the lessons were. They might be bite-sized, which might seem like a good thing if you only have a couple minutes to dedicate to studying at a time, but imho I think that hinders more than it helps. Plus Duolingo is now using AI for their translations and there’s no telling how much is gonna be wrong from here on out.
I think its good for some things, but tbh I think duolingo falls into the supplementary category too… I loved it starting out, but it kinda directly translates everything without any explanation. So you could really misuse certain phrasess if youre not careful.
If you're bothered, I'll explain myself here haha!
For example:
(1)予約があります。
と
(2)予約がありますが。
On Duolingo, they’re both directly translated as “I have a reservation.” And while that’s kinda true, the second gives the sense that someone told you otherwise. Like “I have a reservation (but I’m not sure anymore).”
I found it to be really good practice and solidified a lot of words for me! But I feel like you still need a chunk of auxiliary research to make it a reliable option.
ANYWHO! @Stevc999 WK probably isn’t for you and that’s ok! I reckon you could probably pay for another service that could serve your goals better… here are two similar-priced subscriptions that have really helped me:
(1) If you want a bit more listening practice but podcasts dont work for you at the moment, Comprehensible Japanese would be a good choice
Free option: Hours worth of free videos. No payment details needed, great if you want just a little every day.
$8 a month: Basically won’t run out of videos in your level to watch lol
(2) If you’re struggling to grasp and use certain grammar concepts, Bunpro has really been working for me
Free option: One month free, no payment details needed. Theres also free JLPT practice tests for everyone to use
$5 a month: Everything same as the 1 month trial
Slowly eating through grammar this way made everything a bit more possible for me personally.
I like it, but some people find the fill-in-the-blank learning method to be a bit frustrating with how many politeness forms there are/ different ways to say things.
Tae Kims Guide is a free breakdown of grammar and other helpful info
NHK Easy News is a news source for foreigners living in Japan and children
Natively for finding native novels that might be (roughly) in your level
Anywho, wherever you go, I really hope you keep up the hobby! Your goal to keep your mind active is a good one, and I think Japanese is so different from English, it’s a perfect fit for that kinda thing.
Happy studies!
If your time is sufficiently limited I agree with you that WK doesn’t make sense; direct kanji study can be a useful stepping stool but it has the poorest direct returns. Spoken Japanese obviously doesn’t use kanji at all, plenty of lower level written Japanese uses furigana to tell you how to read the word, and ultimately you can pick up kanji along the way without making it its own point of study. By comparison you will not get anywhere at all without learning some things about how grammar works, learning lots of words (even in non-kanji forms), etc.
But I have to second that Duolingo is a bad idea. Its major goal is keeping you hooked on Duolingo, not teaching you anything; the methodology is very questionable and generally more interested in not presenting you with friction (real learning will be difficult at times!) and stimulating the feeling that you are learning something. Yeah it gives you some sort of exposure to the Japanese language (when the AI voices aren’t pronouncing it wrong) but absolutely any other resource is much more effective. Highly recommend finding a grammar source you can work with and if that’s something like a textbook it’ll teach you words along the way, or otherwise look into replacing WK with Anki or something to just learn the most common words, and work towards starting into graded readers or any basic Japanese once you have some knowledge built up. In the end your biggest goal should be progressing to where you can move beyond the learning tools and Duolingo is most interested in ensuring that you stay with them forever.
Just a small nitpick, but it would depend on the context! が/けど at the end of a sentence can sometimes be used to soften the statement rather than act as a true trailing “but.” For example, wanting to let staff know the reason you’re here without seeming demanding (like they should drop everything to cater to you immediately). But it’s still a failure on Duolingo’s part that you’re left questioning why the two sentences are translated the same!
I only got what I did from it bc I asked HiNative! They basically said it was more of a loose nuance/ implication. So if someone came up to them saying it that way they would assume the person needed help or was confused. I’m only sharing what I’ve been told so I have no other evidence to back me up haha
I went and found the answer I got. Just in case anyone wants to see when reading this thread
Wow, I didn’t understand what I was feeling until you put it into words. I sort of passively absorbed that kanji was the bottleneck of Japanese, which is why I initially thought WaniKani would be important to breaking through the intermediate plateau. My actual bottleneck ended up being listening and a general understanding of Japanese phonetics. Aside from the obvious of listening being difficult, it also affected my ability to subvocalize when I read which also made reading more difficult. I now have a somewhat 75%/25% split between listening immersion and reading immersion.
No worries, the answer you received is pretty much what it means! But needing help can also be something like “I have a reservation, please help me go from here” rather than confusion.
Is HiNative still active nowadays? I heard of it years ago during the Lang-8 transition and nearly forgot it existed.
Happy to help; I think I’ve posted this exact thing at least a dozen times around here by now haha. Just to give out the full picture for everyone I do think kanji study can be helpful! It worked a lot for me the way this site breaks the kanji down and walks you through it. I think just as much as any specific information I learned it was the gradual demystifying of kanji and learning how I can approach them after on my own that I really gained from my time here and I can’t say if it was most time effective but I did definitely benefit. It’s just truly for me a last priority because of that sort of return, something you add on when you already have solid plans but have the extra time and want to give this area extra focus.
There are a ton of kanji and “adult reading” kind of stuff really does get bogged down when you need to look them all up so I think it’s smart just because of the size of the task to be paying SOME attention to them one way or another the whole time after you start learning, but that immersion is absolutely where the true learning happens. I know lots of people with high level skills who just learned the kanji they came across when it happened, if you have the right mentality and patience for it.
Super active for Japanese! considering your bio though, I should say my friend tried to use it for Chinese and it took a week to get 1 answer
My only guess is there are more adult English/ language learners in Japan than China… or HiNatives banned and all of the adult English learners are currently in English speaking countries lol
Lol, I forgot I put that as my bio.
Good to hear for Japanese! Less so for Chinese, but I think I’ll need a harder carry in general due to how rich in idioms and expressions the language is.
Even a few minutes a day will build up over time, but it’s unfortunately that sort of idea that apps like Duolingo target. You feel diligent and productive while ultimately standing in place because, as someone else mentioned, the app doesn’t actually want you to “graduate” from it.
I’m unaware of your particular goals for learning Japanese, but I’d figure that out first so you can tailor your own learning. People here have already given some good advice so I won’t be redundant. I also want to add that I know it can feel overwhelming or even impossible when you have work and other responsibilities. The focus is less on adding to your plate and more adjusting what’s on it. I also know at least one success story of someone becoming able to read native Chinese novels from diligent daily study while balancing a full-time job and only a bit of time to spare. I believe in you!
Not enough reading. You need to be reading because thats where you will use the kanji that you have learned here. WK is a tool to get you reading Kanji as painless as possible.
Duolingo is not a legitimate tool. Its the candy part of a diet. Sure candy is cool and flashy, but you have to eat the veggies (WK) and fruits (reading).
Read. Ditch Duolingo, everyone else’s opinion on it is correct. Stick with Wanikani, and start to learn grammar once you reach level 10 or 15 on Wanikani or so. Then start getting into reading at your level and go up from there. You need multiple resources to learn multiple things, Wanikani is great for learning Kanji and vocab and I think it is the best resource for that. It’s not perfect and it’s not the only resource for it, but a lot does get covered. Ditching Wanikani for Duolingo is definitely not the move.
But second of all, if you only have limited time to learn the language, then unfortunately your progress will be very slow and it would take a very long time to learn Japanese. Japanese is one of the most difficult languages to learn, taking at least 2000 hours to reach fluency. If you only have a few minutes a day, it will take decades to learn Japanese. If you spend 30 minutes a day studying, it would take you 4000 days or around 11 years to be fluent.
When it comes to some things, like the gym, or maybe learning an easier language like Spanish, it’s true that just spending a bit of time on it is better than nothing. But I honestly disagree that that’s the case for Japanese. If you only have a few minutes a day to spend on Japanese, or don’t feel like doing it for more than a few minutes because you’re exhausted from work, you’d be better off just quitting and doing something else. If you want to learn Japanese in any reasonable amount of time and feel like you’re actually making progress, it does take several hours of study every week.
It doesn’t have to feel like a chore, I think learning Japanese is really fun. I’m almost at the point where I can read beginner books and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s meant to be a hobby and if you view it that way it becomes something you look forward to and enjoy doing and not a chore you have to get over with. The only way to willingly spend 2000 hours on something you don’t need to do is if you’re having fun.
I’m still getting returns at the higher levels of WK, but it is a bit of a time sink. However, this is not my first attempt to learn Japanese, but my third. On previous attempts, I never quite managed to become literate. This time round, I’m prioritising learning kanji (there may be more efficient ways, but WK works for me) and reinforcing whatever I learn with a concurrent reading practice.
I really want to put in a plug for Satori Readerhttps://www.satorireader.com/ as an excellent beginner/lower intermediate resource for WK users. You can use an API so all the stories only give the WK kanji you’ve already learnt. It has excellent grammar lessons and audio. A one year subscription is really worth it for the beginner WK user. If you can manage 10-15 minutes of reading on SR daily, it will give more purpose to your WK use. And since there’s nothing better than community support, if you start a regular reading practice, come an join us on the everyday reading challenge Everyday reading challenge
I’d like to second the people recommending bunpro! It’s a great place to learn grammar (and vocab though I don’t personally do much vocab with it yet) and I think learning grammar can feel a bit more rewarding in the moment than kanji. But definitely think about your long term goals- spoken fluency? Literacy? Writing? Watching anime? And shape your learning around your goals.
Can’t recommend satori more also. I’ve started reading seriously since late march every day and it has boosted my reading capability so much. Seeing the kanji in text makes them bind so much more strongly. Even seeing Kanji in text that I dont know is good because I see it in satori then study it here in WK. Its the virtuous cycle and its both faster and easier. Grammar in context means the old boring tired way of grinding grammar exercises from textbooks has become obsolete.
My goal is to read, so reading practice directly targets my goal. People really will do anything except their WK flash cards and reading. The two things that actually get them to fluency.
