making up radical names - something like geoduck, or other, officially non-existent. This makes you sound ridiculous if you use these fake radical names talking to your teacher. It would be nice to provide official names, and WK ideas as an alternative, not a base.
strange words and Kanji order. Why I can’t choose to follow JLPT levels, or any other like from easiest to the most complicated? I don’t think Wanikani order is optimal, because learning unnecessary words (from my lvl point of view) isn’t especially motivating, yet time consuming. It’s a shame that WK teaches some basic words very late, long after e.g. “indigestion”. Why’s that? I want to learn Japanese, not to gain Kanji-ologist degree, so it’s natural I’d like to learn useful words before these fancy ones.
WK claims that “A Japanese schoolchild will spend eight years doing what you can do in a year and a half.” Over 2000 kanji in 1,5 year gives 3,7 new kanji per day. Plus repetitions and vocab. That’s insane workload that average person won’t be able to keep up with. You’ll have a bad day, your aunt’s birthday, regular school or work, or children to take care of, or a travel and this meticulous plan goes to waste. 300 reps pending, or more. And, SRS system does not guarantee 100% efficacy. Despite mnemonics and all the bells and whistles sooner or later, but rather sooner, you’ll earn “leeches”, items that are extremely tough to learn no matter what. That all will pile up. Take into account, that you probable won’t be able to keep that pace. SRS can only optimize frequency of reps for you only, but that doesn’t mean it makes miracles.
Without thinking too hard about it, my immediate thought is: wanikani is a kanji learning site. It came up with its own way to teach people kanji in the order they think would be easiest to learn. They give you vocabulary to help you remember the meanings of the kanji, not the other way around
I feel like that covers why the radicals (WK’s designed methodology), kanji order and vocab order are the way they are. If you think that final product is bad, that’s fine, but it’s a course to be followed. Excess user customization would undermine the thought put into how the course is designed.
Not for nothing, but the “official” radical names are pretty bad. For instance the “凵” radical is “open box” whilst “匚” is “right open box” and then “冂” is “down box”.
And I don’t know about you but whilst these names do make sense they are really bland and unforgettable. (Which kind of goes against what WaniKani wants to be.)
I think part of the point of the Wanikani-specific radical names was to facilitate use in mnemonics. It’s hard to make a mnemonic that successfully conveys which way a box faces, for example.
that said, I hate missing a burn on a radical that I understand and recognize in kanji usage but don’t remember the made-up name. Five months till I get to try again or some such. I didn’t know what a geoduck was before Wanikani and I still don’t really care what it is.
Geoduck is honestly a very solid name for it and y’all need to recognize. 貝 is clam, and a geoduck is a kind of clam. Please, I beg of you as an educator, just go ahead and sound stupid talking to your teacher, it makes life more fun.
Mnemonics are meant to be memorable, nothing more, nothing less. I dislike many of WK’s mnemonics for kanji and vocab, but for radicals, they’ve done a really good job imo.
About 20 minutes ago I used the undo button because I entered “clothes” instead of “outfit” for 衤. I’m here to learn Japanese, not to memorize arbitrary names.
But I can also imagine it as a leaflet of a vertical-bind notebook. Maybe a tearable one, dunno the proper term.
I agree with WK methodology if using Radicals to help remember the meaning of the Kanji, but WK also gives more things to remember, of radical names… wouldn’t it be better to have a little fewer things to remember?
It’s exactly that. Learning exactly Kanji makes remembering new vocabularies easier, and looking vocab while reading is also easier, and those vocab don’t have to be in WK.
I do agree, though, that WK teaches vocab of mixed difficulty near the beginning, but the Content team (WaniKani > Content Updates) improved things a lot in the past few years.
Yes. This. Each person decides when to add an alternative meaning that works for them. I just use “page” rather than geoduck. But, I continue to use wanikani because, for all it’s many flaws, I get something out of it.
We, learners all are unique. We come from different countries, have different skills and cultural background. What works for some, won’t work for others. That’s why I opt for WK flexibility. I find WK very useful, but I also see a room for improvement.
Today i learned there are actual official names for the radicals. I will be making 0 endeavor to remember them, like I have made 0 endeavor to remember the WaniKani ones.