I was wondering about what the general consensus is for inputting answers into WK.
Do you change your keyboard language (via OS settings or otherwise) to use Kana? Or do you just type normally, and let WK change the Romanji into Kana? Or, do you do something else entirely that I’ve not mentioned?
Also- If you feel strongly that one method is better than the other(s), please reply and let me know why!
I just type regularly (WK changes my Romanji to Kana for me)
I’m not sure why I would want to use the IME on my computer, with the hassle of switching back and forth from japanese to english every time it switched meaning or reading, when wanikani already does that.
Plus, my IME cheats for me. It tries to guess what I’m typing and shows suggestions. I don’t want that.
Edit: I lied, kind of. When I use my phone (which I almost never do because it’s so painful), I use kana input because switching is a single tap so not as hard, it’s marginally less painful than fat-fingering an iphone screen keyboard, plus I want to get proficient at the flick keyboard anyway.
That’s a fair point; wouldn’t want to cheat on reviews. I’m able to press ‘windows key’ and ‘space’ to swap my IMEs between languages, but frankly it doesn’t seem worth it to use in WK… I mainly just use it to see if I understand how a sentence is used- searching and finding examples online.
I do this all exclusively on my phone. I let WK do the work except, weirdly, anything starting with a vowel WK auto-writes it with katakana, which is then deemed an incorrect answer So I type my answer for dog and WK gives me イぬ and then I get marked wrong.
So only when an answer starts with a vowel do I swype my keyboard to Japanese
Booo shame on this guy, he doesn’t know how to spell Romaji
I go back and forth on my phone between the Kana keyboard and just typing Romaji. I usually do that because I often accidentally click the “enter” key before I mean to, and end up getting it wrong, and using the Kana keyboard seems to alleviate that somewhat.
The more I think about it, the more I think the vast majority of people probably just type Romaji, since you’d have to keep swapping keyboards back and forth to type ‘meaning’ and ‘reading.’
Yup, that’s the main reason for me. Even when composing posts on here it’s a pain switching back and forth and that’s much less frequently that it would be during reviews.
I do exactly the same thing, using the flick keyboard on my phone for reviews! I didn’t think anybody else would do that because of how often you have to switch between keyboards. Eventually I just got used to it and stopped noticing how annoying it was to switch keyboards between almost every review.
By the way, you can probably set your computer (or it may already be set) to switch between languages with a keyboard shortcut. On my mac it’s option-command-spacebar. It’s just as fast as switching keyboards on a phone that way.
Yeah mine’s shift-option-space but I still have to move my hands, and unlike on the phone, I just don’t really have any good reason to do that.
When I’m on a KaniWani streak, which I do off and on, I use the mac’s handwriting input (after I attempt to draw the kanji on paper from memory, honor system). That way I get some production practice in, not just recognition, and it makes my handwriting nicer. Or at least somewhat legible.
If I had to guess that’s WK interpreting a capital letter as katakana, it would probably be fixed if you turned off autocapitalization off in your phone settings
Similarly, when I type “-” on my phone in order to get the “ー” for vowel lengthening (not sure of it’s actual name), it double types it, leading to “ーー,” which does not cause a rumble, rather an incorrect answer if not fixed. No clue why it doubles up.
WK usually only converts to Katakana if you type an uppercase character. Maybe your keyboard is set to start the input with an uppercase letter by default?
The isuue with the katakana vowels is definitely that your keyboard converts the first character to uppercase; I have the same issue. WK converts to katakana if the last character of the kana is in uppercase. That is why it only happens to vowels at the start of a word. Because of that I always have to double-tap shift in my phone keyboard when a word starts in a vowel.
I wish there was an option to change WK to hiragana-only input. Changing some option for my main keyboard is not really an option since I use it everywhere else and, there, the auto-capitalization makes sense.
Anyway, I exclusively use my phone to do WK, because I can do reviews everywhere this way. I also always use the usual keyboard because I find it to annoying to switch all the time and dislike having the auto-completion when I want to write the readings. I only use the kana keyboard over at Kaniwani when practicing recall. That allows me to select the right Kanji out of the auto-completion instead of just writing the reading.
As I am a bit fat-fingered on my phone, the double-check userscript is a godsend for me. I have reverted so many typos that way.
I use standard input on desktop and also on my phone (I use flaming durtles) but sometimes I use a tablet, in which case I actually prefer to use a japanese handwriting input - helps me remember things a bit better.
Well, I wonder exclusive about smartphones. JavaScript converter pseudo-IME might be doing a bad job… (It should be the same for Kitsun.io and AnkiDroid as well. It seems to be fixed only with native apps (with appropriate settings), therefore Flaming Durtles.)
English keyboard with suggestions (weird ones, because of Kana-esque English)
English keyboard without suggestions
Japanese flick input (with suggestions?)
Japanese QWERTY
0voters
Sorry to be hijacking this with polls, really sorry.
Personally I use SwiftKey on Android, with QWERTY English keyboard and suggestions are annoying. I turn off autocapitalization anyway. English is not my first language, and I don’t care about grammar. (Not only autocapitalization. Auto-period and auto-space are annoying.)
Ohhhhh, yea my keyboard definitely auto-capitalizes the first letter. I probably won’t turn that off, but I’ll try what @Kersplat does and just start with a lower case. Or maybe I’m too far into the habit of swiping when it starts with a vowel
So I type my answer for dog and WK gives me イぬ and then I get marked wrong.
