This radical isn't really right

Sometimes it’s ok that the radical taught isn’t the same as the radical in the kanji. But I think the dry radical on the outer space kanji is too much of a difference.

Turns out it isn’t the dry radical.


(highly recommend you download the phonetic-semantic plug-in if you haven’t already)

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What is this?

It’s a plugin for WK. You can search “WaniKani Open Framework” to get a jist of what plugins are and then search phonetic-semantic composition plugin and download it after you’ve installed open framework. There are also a bunch of other really useful plugins, various people have compiled them in their level 60 posts and others, so I recommend downloading some of them as well.

I understand, but still the WK team should fix this kind of errors. That’s why I posted here. This is wrong.

They always allow for small visual differences. They’re not teaching writing, so something like a hane vs a tome is usually a small thing.

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Not really. There are a multitude of kanji that have the same issue as this, as in, its actual phonetic or semantic component is not represented by a WK radical, because a bunch of WK radicals are arbitary. The radicals are only there to help form mnemonics. As 于 is not a radical in WK’s system (nor will it ever be), 干 is close enough to be used. There isn’t really a point in teaching a radical that isn’t taught as a kanji just to be used in 2 or 3 kanji when an already existing radical is close enough to suit the need.

WK uses the term radical very loosely, which makes it confusing for anyone who comes to WK with some kanji knowledge. I think it’s a bad idea to call them radicals, the KKLC calls them graphemes for example.

What WK is trying to do is to split the kanji into visual parts, it is not related to the history of kanji or the classical meaning. If you take the flag radical for example, it doesn’t mean flag as a kanji, but simply from looking at it you should get the association :triangular_flag_on_post:, and remember some mnemonic with flag just by looking.

Before the radical overhaul some time ago more WK radicals followed this visual principle, but people were complaining that the “real” names are different. So now WK is more mixed with visual and logical interpretations of the kanji.

Many graphemes have slight variants, sometimes with a different stroke order. Take for example 王𡈼壬. It would be more correct to learn three graphemes, but for the WK method you should immediately see king in either case, and go with the mnemonic.

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