Thursday November 24 2022 Content Updates

WaniKani Content Updates
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Kanji

県 (9) - Updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, and reading hint.

青 (5) - Added “young” as an alternative meaning, and updated the meaning mnemonic.

歌 (10) - Updated the meaning mnemonic.

翌 (30) - Updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

撤 (41) - Updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

Vocabulary

青年 (5) - Updated the meaning explanation.

黄色 (7) - Added おうしょく to the reading warning list.

青葉 (10) - Updated the meaning explanation.

歌 (10) - Moved “sing” to the warning list, and updated the meaning explanation.

歌う (12) - Updated the meaning explanation.

男性 (14) - Updated the meaning explanation.

存じる (16) - Added “to believe” as an alternative meaning, added “to think” to the allow list, and updated the meaning explanation.

認める (21) - Updated the meaning explanation and added two new context sentences.

雄犬 (31) - Updated the meaning explanation, replaced one context sentence, and added two context sentences.

搭載 (53) - Added “loading” to the allow list, updated the meaning explanation, added two new context sentences, and updated one context sentence.

雌 (59) - Updated the meaning explanation.

Additions

  • Level 6: 石ころ (いしころ) - small stone
  • Level 17: 青春 (せいしゅん) - youth
  • Level 19: お持ち帰り (おもちかえり) - takeout
  • Level 23: 出張 (しゅっちょう) - business trip
  • Level 25: 岡山城 (おかやまじょう) - Okayama Castle
  • Level 29: 激怒 (げきど) - rage
  • Level 31: 雄 (おす) - male

Movements

  • Level 3: 外す - moving up to level 15.
  • Level 3: 外れ - moving up to level 21.
  • Level 5: 外れる - moving up to level 19.
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ありがとうございます @TofuguJenny 様。

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Many thanks as always!

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Thanks for your hard work, @TofuguJenny! Have a nice day! :slight_smile:

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Muh leeches :frowning:

はず something else, is it intransitive or is it not? I dunno, let’s throw them all at you at the same time.

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FWIW, if one of a transitive/intransitive pair ends in す, that’s always the transitive one. So maybe you could link that up to some other transitive verb ending in す that you remember better?

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Why doesn’t WaniKani explain this?! Why don’t textbooks explain this?!

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IMO, because, in general, rote memorization is faster and better than applying “rules”. This is especially true for transitivity rules which can be tricky (most “rules” have many exceptions). This is particularly important if you wish to learn to speak/write as well as read/understand Japanese.

That said, this particular rule is quite robust (at least I’ve never heard of any exceptions). Your brain will eventually learn to recognize these kinds of things on its own, though (which, for me, is better than trying to memorize a bunch of “rules” a priori). The human brain is absurdly good at identifying patterns, and there are LOTS of patterns like this with Japanese.

Seriously, I find it’s almost always best to ignore rules, and immediately answer with the first meaning that pops into your head when quizzed on a vocabulary word. Don’t even try to consciously apply rules. If you get the transitivity (or anything else) wrong, glance at the correct answer, understand the mistake, and move on. Trust me: if you get it wrong enough times you’ll eventually know it forever.

If you get it right 8 times in a row over six months, you didn’t need any more reviews. You likely found it easy for whatever reason.

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tbf, basic Japanese Linguistics textbooks often (always?) include it. People have something against rules and Japanese going together though. Most other language teachers would at least mention these kind of rules in class if my high school experience is anything to go by.

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Yeah, I deliberately only picked this specific small slice of the transitive/intransitive pair patterns because it happens to be a reliable rule – some of the other pair groups are more “could be this, could be that”. (In fact the web page I was looking at claimed that all verbs ending す are transitive, whether part of a pair or not, but I’m absolutely not confident enough that there are no exceptions to that one to advocate it…)

I think on balance I agree that in the end you just want to memorize the verbs, in the same way you memorize whether -eru and -iru verbs are godan or ichidan. Seeing the words in sentences is really where you want to be for that; in the meantime occasionally rules of thumb are helpful.

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That’s not been my experience, nor did I mean to come off as “anti rules”.

I think it’s useful to learn “rules”, especially with grammar. It’s helpful to recognize when they apply and when something is an exception. But I think it’s often best to let our brains figure out the rules on their own rather than attempting to memorize a bunch of rules provided by others.

With sufficient input, our brains are excellent at forming rules on their own (pattern matching).

For output, I find it far more useful to mostly ignore “rules” in practice: recall after rote memorization is faster and better for real-time communication. You simply don’t have time to apply rules during a conversation.

And, of course, an SRS only aims to help with rote memorization. Its job isn’t to explain “rules”.

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I am so glad I found this section. I was really wondering why I was suddenly getting new lessons out of the blue that were from levels past. I had no idea content was getting updated so frequently. Super awesome to see. So if vocab gets moved up to a level we haven’t reached yet, will any of our progress on it change?

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It shouldn’t. You just won’t see it in your reviews until you reach the required level again (I think that’s the traditional way things were done. Now it might just be that once an item is unlocked it’ll remain unlocked regardless of any requirement changes, IIRC)

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Blacklist “Murder” for 殺人者 please.

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Hi @hibagon! No, if you’ve already unlocked the vocabulary, it will stay at the same level for you. Only the ones you haven’t unlocked yet get moved up.

Hi @VisitsFromTheIsnt, consider it done :slight_smile:

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