I understand Wanikani is subscription based and making it confusing will bring in more money but… it should be possible to have “Vocabulary only” when you have a lifetime subscription. Like, I’ve already spent all the money that’ll ever spend on this. You don’t need to drag it out. I could learn this in a month instead of a year.
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Wouldn’t it make more sense to have it as a setting rather than tying it to subscription type?
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I’m not entirely sure what it is you want with this request/demand.
This is not a vocabulary learning website. The course is aimed at teaching kanji at a relatively fast pace, focusing on the main common readings the characters have. The vocabulary lessons are only there to reinforce the kanji and their readings that are being taught. So only teaching vocabulary doesn’t really make much sense.
I’d take it one step further and say that if WK’s vocabulary is all you’re going off on with no other forms of learning besides it, you’re not going to come particularly far in terms of comprehension. Even a ton of basic very common kun-yomi readings are missing from here. But conversely, being more familiar with the main readings and meanings of the kanji itself can help you piece what unknown words are without lookup very frequently.
If vocab is all you really need because you know most kanji on their own, then an anki deck is much more suited to your needs than this website. (I stopped around level 30 for this reason, currently around N1 proficiency or so)
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Yes but I’m trying to be reasonable.
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I don’t get what you’re saying.
I’m using Wanikani to learn japanese like many other I’m sure. Vocabulary show you kun’yomi when the kanji is by itself but you’ll see it again for example in a jukugo and you’ll learn the on’yomi then. So why they make you memorise the kun’yomi reading in the kanji section and even a different meaning of the kanji in the radical section before you get to the actual meaning in the vocabulary section… It’s just to throw you off. They make it confusing on purpose so we spend more time learning this thing that is really not that long to learn normally.
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OP wants to speedrun to level 60 so they’re not paying for a subscription for longer than they absolutely need to.
That may be so, in which case, a spaced repetition system is probably not what you’re after.
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Yeah, then it sounds like this is not the course they should be doing. At all.
Pretty much any other form of study is going to be more beneficial than an SRS course made to take a certain amount of time if what you want to do is speedrun to the end.
Glossing over the material pages once sounds more like what they want to be doing, but that’s something you don’t need to pay for to access, I think. The paid part is the SRS system organized the way it is.
Nothing is made to throw anyone off. So again, I think the key issue here is that OP’s goal does not align with what this course is.
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I’m not trying to speed run anything.
There’s no need for the intentional confusion while learning. That’s what I’m saying.
WaniKani uses vocab for clarification. If it’s confusing you instead, you may be missing something.
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You guys don’t understand what I’m saying.
We should learn it once correctly instead of twice wrong and one right.
I’m trying to rephrase it as much as possible so you guys can get it. But what I’m saying is really not that complicated.
Well, I thought I understood, but now I don’t. You lost me here:
Run that one past me again? When are we learning anything wrong?
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Kanji very frequently has a different, broader meaning as a concept than when it occurs as vocabulary. Even if the vocabulary is just that kanji on its own.
I’ll give you the radicals, which are not all that great.
But the vocabulary reading is absolutely not the one true right meaning for the characters. Especially when tying the concepts together as one word.
So no, they’re not trying to confuse you to drag this course out. At all. I say this at someone who quit at Level 30 because I thought this course was not keeping pace with me while demanding way too much time to advance with.
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In radicals and kanji . It’s often a different meaning or the wrong thing to type.
For example:
Radical - 生 = Life
Vocab - 生 = Fresh
Kanji - 主 = しゅ
Vocab - 主 = めし
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So the kanji is closer to the real meaning than the vocab even if the kanji is by itself?
It means both of those things.
I’ll grant that sometimes WaniKani’s radical names are a little bit out there - they’re intended as mnemonic components rather than meaning components - but this is not one of those times.
It’s read as both of those things. You need to learn both of those readings, because they’re used at different times. But don’t forget the おも reading too.
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I think the kanji meaning is some amalgamation of its meaning in all of the vocab it appears in, and each vocab uses it in perhaps a slightly different way. I think of the kanji meaning as the vibe of the kanji, where as a vocab word has a more precise definition. So in that sense, sometimes a kanji meaning could be different than the vocab that consists of only that kanji.
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I somewhat agree with you but only when the kanji reading selected by WaniKani is a partial Kun reading. For instance the very latest addition is in this category: 貰 is taught with the reading もら which in my opinion is absurd.
In these instances I would argue that it would make sense to introduce the vocab directly instead of going through a pointless step teaching a meaningless partial reading.
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ぬし, but yes.
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Listen, I haven’t had breakfast yet this morning, everything looks like めし to me. 
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Everything in radical and Kanji is very variable for meanings. Some radicals are components coined by WaniKani, and so don’t have an actual meaning. Some Kanji don’t expose any meaning in some vocabularies, staying as Ateji; and some of which are obscured by etymological background and Kanji simplification/substitution.
I would say, sometimes, some radical and Kanji don’t have any meaningful meaning. It’s only because WaniKani wants to simplify the system. It’s easier to have meaningful keyword for everything.
Anyway, radical “name” is kinda more messed up than Kanji/vocabulary “meaning” in this website.
For reading, it’s a different issue. Seeing a Kanji in context and you are supposed to be able to sound it out. Most commonly, a native would answer with only one reading, and usually as a part of a pronounceable vocabulary, rather than a Kanji on its own. (And sometimes only pronounceable as only a few Kanji in tandem together.)
Vocabulary readings are more exact, while Kanji are more like a guess for whatever Kanji is in a vocabulary. Having more Kanji readings is for having a better guess.
I kinda agree that it may be possible to quiz only vocabularies. Keeping radicals and Kanji to only for lessons. Or also make Kanji a latter mini-game, after you have finished a minimal number of vocabularies.
But then, in a way, trust the system. My proposed complicated system might not work for many people. Simple system is easier to understand.
You can relearn vocabularies too. Don’t think you will learn once and for all. Relearn readings for pitch accents. Relearn meanings by reading more. Understand meanings better from etymology and historical threads.
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