Thursday April 17 2025 Content Updates

[superelf94]

@matt_llvw

If there are actual errors in the translations, fine—make a comprehensive list of them and change them all at once. But don’t mess with our learning process piecemeal just to justify your job. There are far more impactful improvements to make—like adding example sentences and real usage.

I do agree with this, but also many different ways of learning words and association come directly from users asking for things to be changed to allow this word . There are compromises in some places, but I also saw the explanation for the 妙 change in a different thread

@nick_lee

Hi matt_llvw,

Originally the kanji used the meaning “strange” while the vocab 妙 used “odd.” We wanted to find a word that fit both of them, to make it easier on the learner, and went with “peculiar.” We also felt “peculiar” would more precise for the nuance of this kanji. Compared to “peculiar,” the word “strange” has more of a negative connotation, at least to me. But 妙 feels more neutral and appears in a number of positive words like 巧妙 (50) or 妙案 (not in WaniKani yet but planned as an addition!).

Sometimes we do end up splitting hairs like this to avoid overlap with similar kanji or vocab — in this case with 奇, which has the visible meanings “odd” and “strange,” and 変. I know it can be destabilizing as you say and I apologize for that. For the 妙 kanji we do still keep “strange” and “odd” on the allow list, to avoid that disruption as much as possible.

It was actually a response to your original query about this exact word, but at least the words strange and odd on the allow list so it shouldn’t disrupt that specific word too much?

I’ll say I want the wanikani team to make their changes with everyone in mind and while it sometimes makes me drop a master to apprentice, I don’t want them to never change something if they work out as a team with natives that the definition should be altered a bit