WaniKani before any knowledge of Japanese?

Japanese Language
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So I’m probably taking two intense Japanese classes over the summer semester and I want to know what you guys think of going ahead and doing WaniKani before I start to presumably make things a bit easier. I don’t much Japanese aside from what I’ve learned on here so far. I thought this is a good idea. What do you think of this?

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I think it’s great. Do it :grin:

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Thanks! I don’t plan on learning anything else right now except what’s on wanikani because of time restraints. But I’m excited to learn :smiley:

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It won’t hurt you. If anything kanji won’t be a big problem anymore for you in your continued studies.
Just make sure you balance your wanikani studies and don’t end up like me, still not knowing much japanese despite knowing ~2000 kanji… :sweat_smile:

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You can try to know what some thing is trying to say if you can use context clues from the vocab you know xD

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You might think that, but with very basic grammar knowledge it’s surprisingly hard to understand even simple sentences despite being able to read it. :eyes:

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As long as you have a good grasp of hiragana and katakana first, then sure, go for some Kanji. Won’t hurt anything to know some kanji before starting your studies. Plus, by using WaniKani, you’ll have a jump on some vocab as well. Of course, WaniKani doesn’t really help with grammar at all.

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I can read hiragana and katakana pretty easily : )

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You’re all set then.
You’d be surprised the number of folks come here not knowing kana. Lots of complaints of WaniKani being broken because the person entered say じよう instead of じょう, etc, and having no idea whats wrong.

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ugh, some people!!

(that is totally not what I was searching for when I came to the forums for the first time…)

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I think WK would be really beneficial. The biggest hurdle for most in learning Japanese is kanji. If you have a system for that (like WK), then the rest is easier. I’ve done Japanese classes before and since I kinda restarted every time, I never got far, but I could also never figure out how I’d get past learning so many kanji. I now have that solution and I’m starting Japanese classes in April and I’m stoked to see how far I can be with kanji by the time I get there. (I’m also studying grammar and will add other things later, but I have the time to do that and it certainly isn’t mandatory.)

Think how much easier learning grammar and other things will be if you can already read/understand most/a lot of the words. :slight_smile:

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The one thing I’d suggest studying now and not waiting for is pronunciation. I think you’re doing yourself a bit of a disservice if you’re learning all these kanji and words and their readings while reinforcing the wrong sounds in your head.

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