Update beneficial or detrimental for higher levellers?

The update apparently makes it possible for me to reach level 60 a week sooner and otherwise doesn’t matter to me since I’m ignoring the update to the extent possible, so… beneficial :wink:

This update wouldn’t have made any difference to me even if I wasn’t 60, because I stopped using the mnemonics altogether before level 10. The updates are undoubtedly an improvement though, because the new names are closer to the true etymologies now. They also don’t rely on cultural references, which, regardless of your opinion of them, would only become more and more dated over time.

Just remember; every missed review means an opportunity to learn that item better :ok_hand:

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Too soon to tell how it impacts me personally. But for the long-term benefit of the site, I think the change was a smart move.

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Thanks for the clarification! I assumed was a new Kanji because suddenly appeared at a level that I had already reached.

At level 60, the only thing that really affected me was that some of the kanji that used the kun’yomi now use on’yomi. Other than that, not really anything.

So far… honestly, I don’t feel like it’s made much difference. I glanced through the name changes, and most of them are intuitive so I don’t even know that I need to bother “learning” the radicals again.

My kanji lessons have gone fine so far. Occasionally they use a new name, but it either makes sense already or I just incorporate the new info as I go.

Looking at the mnemonics for things I’ve got wrong, they’ve either been the same, the rewrite hasn’t been significant enough to make any difference, or it’s just given me a fresh perspective on something that was a leech anyway (so clearly I wasn’t remembering the previous mnemonic!).

So I think it’ll take a couple of weeks to get used to things fully and then it’ll probably just be better (because it does all seem more consistent). I’m concerned that there’s been an overall shift towards less ‘impact’ in the radical names, but the mnemonics so far have seemed good, and it’s probably balanced by many of the radicals being closer to their traditional meanings.

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I’m going to be the odd one out here.
I don’t use the mnemonics at all, I basically just brute force the kanji until I can remember them.

So I guess for me, the three new vocab is nice?

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Mostly beneficial. I rarely use WaniKani’s mnemonics, preferring my own ways of remembering kanji, mostly through association with words, meanings, differentation from other similar kanji. Beneficial because many radicals got closer to kanji identical to them, which have established meanings, same for everyone, and thus mnemonics are more useful. Many radicals also had their names changed to what they are in most other places, to what Japanese use now as radical meaning or to the original meanings from when kanji were invented. It’s less of what Kouichi had in mind at the moment when he prepared the first version, and more of what can be useful to average kanji student.

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I switched back to old mnemonics.

I’ve been away for some time due to being busy elsewhere. Obviously I forgot a lot of kanji since I missed so many reviews. The point of radicals and mnemonics is to aid memory, so a familiar old one is better than a new one, even if the new one is improved.

I’m glad WK has changed, it will be better for new users, but I wish I could turn the whole thing off so I don’t even see the new radical names.

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I think it’s beneficial, or at least has the potential to be. There is definitely some friction due to the changes, but unless I’m missing something there don’t really seem to be any major downsides to me.

I’m thinking of it like this. Regarding radicals:

  • At level 47, there were a small number of new radicals automatically added to my lesson queue (something like 15? I didn’t think to count). ~15 mandatory new items doesn’t seem like a very big deal in the big scheme of things.
  • The radical re-learning tool gives me 23 “urgent” new radicals and 56 “upcoming” ones.
  • So in total there are less than 100 new and updated radicals at my level, and I’m over 75% of the way through. That’s not nothing, but even if I dropped everything to learn them, that’s what, a few extra days to get them to Guru? I find the radicals generally pretty easy, so I’m probably just going to go ahead and do that.

And then regarding kanji:

  • Some of the old kanji had their readings switched (usually from kun’yomi to on’yomi, it seems). These seem to be the most problematic, because the old mnemonics won’t directly apply to the switched reading. However, I probably already know the other readings through the vocabulary by now, so for most of these it’ll probably just be a matter of inputing the wrong reading, having the crabigator shake his head at me, and then putting in the other reading instead.
  • If for some reason I haven’t learned the alternate reading, I’ll get them wrong, and that will force me to stop and relearn them. That involves learning new mnemonics along the way, which might be based on the new radicals. So, worst case, some kanji that were previously at higher SRS levels might fall back down to lower levels while I relearn them. That might slow down my progress in terms of WK levels, but it means I’m going back and filling in gaps in my knowledge. Isn’t that worth the extra time?
  • There are also kanji for which WK is still asking for the same reading, but whose mnemonics have changed. But is this really a big deal? If I already know the reading, the new mnemonics won’t matter a bit – I’ll probably just get them right without even being aware that they’ve changed. If I get them wrong, though, that means that those are kanji I’m already having trouble remembering. So in that case, the old mnemonics weren’t really doing much for me, were they? If the new mnemonics are better, then maybe they’ll help me remember kanji I was previously having trouble with (and if not, I’m really no worse off than I was to begin with, right?).

So I guess overall I don’t really see any big downsides here? This seems like it would be a much bigger deal if there were some reason to want to go back and re-learn all of the mnemonics, including those for kanji I already knew, but I don’t really see much point in that.

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