Or worse, do you really want to be so mired in mnemonics that you still need them while speaking?
Yes - when you get to a certain stage with a kanji you usually don’t need the radicals anymore but sometimes if you haven’t seen it for a while you might use them as a prompt.
Also, there are lots of kanji that are in play at any one time so it’s at the very least a step backwards with them.
On the two separate systems, without wanting to get too technical it would probably have meant adding versioning to the elements in the system which would be possible and would mean that everyone could be kept happy. You could make this opaque so that it is essentially hidden from the users. I’m sure something like this was considered by the developers, I would just ask that if they are doing such a change in the future they consider it again.
Mnemonics don’t really have anything to do with speaking, this is a tool to learn how to read, so I’m not sure how this is relevant.
Mnemonics are fundamental to the way that WaniKani works and the way that people learn using it. My point is really that we should be very careful in changing them.
I’m perfectly happy that I’m not “doing it wrong”. My concerns are genuine - if that has had no impact on you then I’m very happy for you. Having said that, I do think it can be useful for everyone at every stage to be able to break down the kanji into its constituent radicals (from memory - perhaps of the mnemonic) - especially when you move onto actually writing by hand - should you wish to do that.
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Which level were you before resetting?
I was just at level 3
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@anon20839864 Why Personal Disaster Meaning Explanation still uses Arrows instead of Flood?
I don’t expect any Tofugu people to reply this post quickly since it’s holiday season. Happy New Year!
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Was that a changed one? I hadn’t done it yet. But they didn’t highlight the ‘arrows’, so I don’t think it was referencing the radical, just the obvious arrows appearance.
I would say that contrary to what some have said, there’s no shame in using mnemonics when you are stumped, even with something you’ve burned already. I think you spelled out pretty well how doing so can help when you’re stuck.
But I still don’t really understand why WK changing their mnemonics or radicals would be upsetting. First, no one is forcing you to abandon the old radicals. You’ll still get marked correct when you answer using the old meaning (for, say, “hick” rather than “canopy”).
And just because they changed the mnemonics written on a given kanji’s page doesn’t mean that you need to forget the old one. By all means, if you remember them, keep using them.
But if you can’t remember one, that means it didn’t work for you. In which case, make up a new one that will work for you.
Personally, I make up my own mnemonic for every kanji I learn because I remember them better that way. And if I forget the one I made up at some point, I review it to see if it can be improved. Usually it can. You may not wish to do that, and that’s fine, but just consider that the mnemonics WK provides are designed to stick in your memory. That is their sole function. If they don’t stick in your memory, re-reading them is not productive. There’s no magic to the one you learned before but now forgot. It’s up to you to invent or find a story that will stick in your brain, and you can use whatever radical names you prefer.
So how has this change affected you negatively? Honest question. Is there some reason why you can’t keep using the mnemonics you’ve already learned?
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Hi, is there a way to make is so the old radical names don’t work? (other than resetting) Just now i had a lot of radicals to review and i accidently typed the old names for the radicals 冊禾. This is very annoying as I constantly check after i get it right to see if I got it correct or if I used the old one. The old ones are very confusing now with the new mnemonics so im doing my best to forget them but this isnt helping 
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Sorry if someone has already posted the answer, but can anyone tell me which kanji were added/ moved? For example, I know 僕 got moved to an early level, but does anyone have a full list?
(I just scrolled down from the top to find this. Really should have scrolled up from the bottom…)
thank you so much @anon20839864 for lovely contents update〜
not going relearning radical but it feels more natural〜
onyomi first was my great pleasure〜
deactivate now〜
also happy new year:bamboo:
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I agree with what you are saying but it is based on the premise that I stick to the old radicals.
The way I see it, there are/were two options open to me: 1. stick to the old radicals 2. embrace the new ones.
Option 1:
This would have been my preference but unfortunately the old radicals are no longer first class citizens in WK. They do not appear when you view the radical name and you have to do a bit of digging to find them. Also, the old ones are only going to be supported for a limited amount of time. This has led me to reluctantly start using the new ones. So…
Option 2:
Once you choose to embrace the new radicals, that really means forgetting the old names/meanings. It really is not useful (although I have unfortunately found it necessary at times) to hold onto two different names/meanings for the radical. So, this now means that a lot of the knowledge that I have built up (and that is how WK works: one thing building on top of another) feels like it has been lost and, if not lost, then at least disrupted.
Yes, I can make up (and have made up) my own mnemonics but they are based on the radicals I’ve learnt in WK - I think it would be counter-productive to create my own radical names.
As you say, it is sometimes necessary to use the mnemonics to recall a kanji. I am now doing some reviews of kanji/vocabulary where those mnemonics I learnt are useless. So for example all the images/stories I had in my head with butchers are now just blanks because I see the radical now as a building and I didn’t learn the mnemonics with them involved. Also, I still haven’t got through all of the new radicals yet (I was on a vacation break when this change happened) so I am in the odd state that I am reviewing vocabulary that contains kanji that I don’t know the radicals for.
So, in summary, I would have loved to have kept to the old radicals but didn’t feel like it would be a good option long term. Switching has felt like a bad option in the short term though and it will be quite a while before I am back on track.
Tater Tots are mentioned in Napoleon Dynamite, so known everywhere.
:o)
… also I’m told Tolkien introduced C S Lewis to Christianity.
Well, I think you’re overestimating how much and for how long that’s going to be a real problem. They really should have just dropped all support for the old ones and said “deal with it.” People would rip off the band-aid, get it over with, and forget about it in a month. Clinging to the old ones is just prolonging the pain.
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Hi Alex [I’m not Kristen, but I wanted to respond anyway :)]
Which dictionary app are you using?
NOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
[sorry]
…and was later exposed as a wig. There was hell toupée.
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I use an iOS app called ‘Japanese’. The kanji history stuff comes from Outlier – it’s just a preview right now, so it only shows it for some kanji, but you can check out a demo on their site: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/pages/japanese
Outlier’s Japanese kanji dictionary is based on their Chinese character dictionary, which they already released to good reviews. Their blog is also super interesting and goes into quite some depth – I’d recommend giving it a read if you have any interest in the history of kanji!
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