The main reason was I had just got to the fast levels and WK in their infinite wisdom decided to **** out the kana update and by the time I had got 4 levels down (should have been 6 or 7 in that time) I said screw this and dropped it. I imported the remaining kanji into an anki deck but they were all kanji I have never seen or needed to use in my future readings so I deleted the deck after about 2 or 3 weeks…
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ah, that makes sense, thank you for explaining. Was the kana update when they added the kana only words?
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Yes. And they promised an opt out option that never came.
Ah, that makes sense.
I’m getting annoyed I must admit because of how lesson batches at available exactly 24 hours from they were last completed. I work various hours so I quite often have gone days without being able to do any lessons because they haven’t been available at the time I have that day to complete them. I did contact them asking if they’d consider making them available from midnight ie like the option you have in Bunpro, and they basically said no. So I’ve been stuck at level 11 a while now with all the available kanji at passed level…
Don’t go off WaniKani times. Just be consistent with the times you do reviews/new items. For example. I would do my reviews at 8am and new items then do another set at 4pm. Some people do 3 times a day to balance out the new items a bit more. But don’t let wk drive you.
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Deep Thought would approve.
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I felt similarly when I first heard about it, but the total number of kana-only words has turned out to be quite small and tend to be good ones, in the sense of ones you don’t just sponge up easily and need some repetition to remember. Often like 沢山 — I’ve literally never seen it written that way, but たくさん is a vital word. Just, ones that don’t even have rarely-seen kanji.
Much more irritating to me has been the recent reshuffles where they’ve swapped the order in which you first see an alternate reading for a kanji and so my experience is twice getting “this is an unusual reading but you can remember it from [word I haven’t gotten to yet because it wasn’t in that order when I hit it]”. I’ve sent notes and they’ve generally fixed it when there are cyclic “recursive function: see function, recursive”/“function, recursive: see recursive function” pointers to readings where the mnemonic never comes.
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Does the new lessons update help, being able to skip vocab? I’ve already started skipping some that seem less useful. Although I try to make sure I have at least one vocab for each kanji. Whether this strategy is wise… Time will tell
I started to answer here but thought my reply changed topics a bit too much so I created a new post: “Skipping” vocab via Lesson Picker?
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I have been trying since 2017 to start wk and learn Japanese, and it only stuck this past year. I’ve written more in depth recently about my journey this past year and what made the attempt different from the previous attempts, but I can say wk is the best and most important resource to me. I’m a wk evangelist- see excerpt from one of my linked posts-
wk might be good for you, or might not. I would recommend it to anyone learning at least to try- I found that even when I hadnt used wk for years, i still remembered the kanji I learned from wk on japanese food labels or in manga, so it suits my learning style. I like typing in the answers, as whenever i did anki I would just mark things as correct when i was only tenuously correct, or got close but not perfect. I don’t like customizing like you can on anki (or even bunpro) because i cheat. The wk interface makes me want to use it, unlike anki which doesn’t. If you don’t like those features, then it might not be the best program for you
My main goals for the language have always been to be able to read untranslated manga and games, to immerse in native materials, and having a good basis of kanji knowledge is a must for that goal. The needle really turned for me once I hit 1000 kanji, which really made reading much easier. I still do look ups, often, but the sentence structure is legible due to wk and focusing on N5-N4 grammar this past year.
Throughout my year, I had tried to add in additional srs, like Kanji in context cards or bunpro, and just absolutely could not do it. I only have the bandwidth for one srs program in my life at a time, and as long as I make steady progress in one, I’m happy. Wk is a part of my life at this point, I use it everyday, and try to do about 15 lessons and all reviews. I don’t let it pile up- I do have a fear of a huge 500+ review pile. I maintain a roughly 10 day per level pace- it goes up to 15-22 days when I start a new job, then usually goes down to about 7-9 days once I settle at work. If i’m just feeling overwhelmed, I put it on vacation mode for a few days, then get back to it. Once i finish wk, I plan to make an immersion deck on anki or the like, and put in words I want to learn from games/manga. One step at a time though.
I like learning kanji, I like learning Japanese- it’s tough, but rewarding. I’ve been immersing from the beginning of the year, but now I can actually understand about 80% more of what I read than before, even without a dictionary. It’s slow and steady work. I think its important to define your “why” and find ways to incorporate those goals now into the language. I have three manga magazine subscriptions on Bookwalker, and every new issue, I read through the magazine, sometimes I skim, othertimes I intensively read a chapter that really interests me. It depends.
Setting goals is also important too, month to month. I love having a study blog because it holds me accountable and helps me track my wins and future directions. There’s been days where I push a little bit extra because I have a goal to be up 2 levels in a month. I think also concurrent learning is important when doing wk- you need to be exposed to the kanji you learn on wk in some form outside of the website, so doing a textbook can help a lot as well. After all, you need grammar to help you read.
I wouldn’t do wk without textbook study or immersion- its like theyll be washed away in memory by the time you do start reading/grammar study. It’ll sink in better when you do both.
I think ultimately it’s up to you to decide if wk works for you or not- theres a lot of mixed opinion here on the forums. Anki might work better for you, or maybe you should start with Japanese from Zero and start even slower. Sometimes you’re not ready to commit fully to the process of language learning, and need a more relaxed fun little thing like Duolingo, which won’t help you long term, but gets you comfortable with making a routine of language learning.
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I studied Japanese formally in school for five semesters — at which point I think I was tested on 350 kanji? But as a linguistics student I was always taking 2–3 other languages at the same time, and when you do that you tend to treat languages as very complicated algebra — symbol manipulation that only has meaning once you correctly complete the necessary transformation rules.
(Which is how field and historical linguists deal with languages no one but its speakers are/were fluent in, so it’s on-point for linguistics training, but it isn’t great for learning the languages themselves in the way people who specialize in a single language do.)
Then I went a decade without studying Japanese at all. Then I tried to pick it up again as a small side project, but I couldn’t put the time into it until lockdowns in April 2020. Then I really did start studying Japanese an hour or more a day—with a combination of Duolingo, grammar textbooks, and impromptu self-study like watching an anime I know well with Japanese subs.
It was only in November 2022 (i.e., 2 ½ years after resuming Japanese language study) that I started WaniKani. I can’t imagine trying to start it earlier—it wouldn’t “hook into” things. But since I was having more and more frustration with written sources, not knowing the kanji began to be untenable.
So for me, that was the perfect time to start WK. But I imagine that, for anyone it’s been working for, the time they started was perfect for them!
(You may wonder how many of those 350 university kanji I retained. My answer would be “none of them, but I still remembered how some words were written in kanji”. I say this because when you start systematic kanji study you begin to see how many kanji have subtly-different variations. Today I can not only figure out likely meaning from context but also sound out many words with kanji I’ve never studied, which I’ll never stop thinking is totally wild. But kanji do carry sound hints, it just takes a lot of kanji under your belt to start recognizing them in any useful way.)
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I think this is true in a way. At least, I think learning Japanese for a while - maybe a year or so - before starting the systematic study of kanji makes that kanji study much easier. And then eventually it becomes necessary anyway.
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